


Like Constellations a Million Years Away

by AndyAO3, ArcanaFire



Series: The Many Coping Mechanisms of Owen Shepard [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Hard Paragon Shepard, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 41,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcanaFire/pseuds/ArcanaFire
Summary: In which Cerberus finds out just how hard it is to railroad a man who's effectively a hundred kilos of concentrated anxiety seasoned with ADHD into doing things their way. And then just for good measure, he steals one of their goons in the process.
Relationships: Male Shepard/Original Male Character
Series: The Many Coping Mechanisms of Owen Shepard [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659541
Comments: 121
Kudos: 36





	1. welcome to the war, we've only begun

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has so many moving parts i don't even know where to begin, but i gotta try. so.
> 
> 1\. ULTRA-PARAGON SHEPARD. owen shepard is a custom shep based off of a very old WoW OC who was a noble-blooded belf prot paladin. i rolled this guy when i was 15 or 16, he's been through a lot. due to his age, however, he is far from what i'd consider a well-rounded character. i'm deconstructing him as i write him at this point and it's exactly as cathartic as it sounds.  
> 2\. ORIGINAL CERBERUS CHARACTER. yuli markov is a completely wholecloth OC and he is not mine. he started as a nightborne arms warrior belonging to a friend who was supposed to be a villain but got rescued at the last second. he's here to do renegade things when they need to be done because one time shepard yelled at the council and hung up and it left him needing a cup of cocoa and a nap afterward. yuli's about as likely to say or do dumb things that get him yelled at as shepard is, but he's learning. deradicalization is a process.  
> 3\. CANON DIVERGENCE. some sequence breaks, some "fuck you bioware that plot point was dumb," some redemption of characters that aren't usually redeemed, some deep cuts in the lore that nobody cares about, and a whole lot of the same hard scifi nonsense i've always been known to indulge in. also a friend helped by contributing an entire-ass squadmate and my shep is a goddamn chessmaster who was a raid leader in another life.  
> 4\. WAR HERO, SPACER, VANGUARD. boring, i know. i've avoided writing spacers up to this point because on the surface, it's the bland one. but it's me writing it, so you know it won't escape subversion for too terribly long. 
> 
> that's about all i can think of for now. my co-author doesn't have an AO3, but i'll be putting up a link where you can find their books the moment i get said link myself so you know where to find more of character writing like yuli. as for me, i'm logicalfangirl@tumblr and you can find art and other updates there. 
> 
> and now, let the fic commence!

Shepard was livid. Storming through the halls of the Cerberus base he found himself stuck on, Miranda hot on his heels.

"Shepard, please. You need to think about this-"

"The fuck is there to think about?" he snapped, whipping around to face her. His biotics flared; a nearby potted plant was flung from its perch on a table and crashed onto the floor in a mess of broken ceramic and artificial soil. "I've seen how Cerberus operates. I know what you're willing to do to get the results you want."

Miranda huffed. "This isn't the time to get into petty quibbles over politics, Shepard. Colonies are disappearing-"

"And I'll look into it!" He didn't tower over her, but he had enough height and bulk to loom. He was also too angry to care that he was breaking one of his own personal rules by using that to his advantage. "But I'm not doing it under the supervision of the Illusive Man's right hand."

"Then at least take Jacob with you."

"Jacob's a tool."

"You can't just go off on your own. It's too much of a risk, we have no idea what we'll find when we get there."

"What I'll find when I get there," Shepard corrected. He turned back down the hall, headed to the shuttle bay. Security had been tightened on the base; there were guards everywhere. Goons, really. His eyes darted to inspect them as he passed, taking note of how they were equipped.

He didn't need a tech. He could handle that himself in a pinch. What he needed was versatility. Mid-range, a balance of offense and defense. Shepard knew what he was capable of. If this was a typical human colony, it'd be a lot of close quarters and flimsy prefabs. Completely workable, as long as he could-

"You," he said, pointing to a helmeted guard with an assault rifle. "What's your name?"

The guard stiffened. "Uh, me?"

"Yeah, you."

Shifting from one foot to the other, the guard glanced around before giving his hesitant reply. "It's, um. Markov. Yuli Markov." Then he shot upright to give a quick salute as he seemed to realize who it was he was talking to. "Sir."

Perfect. "Alright, Markov. You're with me."

Miranda looked like she was about to blow a gasket. "Shepard, what-"

"You said I shouldn't go alone," Shepard reminded her. "Look at that gear. Markov, what's your specialty?"

The guard, now clearly uncomfortable, looked between the two of them with obvious uncertainty. "Biotics, sir," he said, "but uh, where exactly are we going that it's gonna matter?"

"Freedom's Progress," Shepard told him before turning again to Miranda. "See? Biotics and an assault rifle. And with gear like that, he's a heavy. You? Someone pops your barriers and  _bam_ ," here, Shepard smacked the heels of his palms together to indicate getting flattened, "you're a smear on the walls. Him? That's forty pounds of modified ERCS kit he's wearing. He's fine. And I'll be fine in his hands."

Miranda folded her arms, a deep frown etched into her face. "The Illusive Man won't be happy about this, Shepard."

"Tough." Shepard went right back to heading for the shuttle bay, ignoring her sputtering. "Come on, Markov. Let's see what's up with these missing colonies."

"Yes sir," Markov acknowledged.

This was gonna be rough.


	2. put on your war paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard just had to pick the one goon on the base that would spend the entire mission sassing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imma post this while i'm thinking about it because the prologue/first chapter was super short
> 
> yuli's hair is dyed deep indigo blue and goes down to his ass btw. just as an aside. his writer assures me that it's possible for it to all fit inside his helmet. i'm skeptical, but i'll take their word for it.

Sitting across from someone like Owen Shepard in a shuttle would probably be enough to give anyone claustrophobia. The man had a knack for making any space seem small, narrowing the focus of everyone in the room down to his own commanding presence. Oh sure, the mess of bright orange hair and disarming boyishness of his face could put a person at ease after he had their attention, but Yuli could tell that the man was sharp. And he wasn't about to be drawn in by it.

Cerberus had put a lot into getting Shepard back, and now because of one tantrum, the success of this mission was riding on  _him_ . One nobody guard that Shepard had picked out seemingly at random. Had Shepard actually seen anything in him, or had it been pure coincidence? Was all this just due to Shepard wanting to spite the Illusive Man, or was there some other reason for it all?

Yuli sighed, pulling off his helmet so he could take a moment to put up his hair properly. Whatever. He had a job to do. No point in wondering why it needed to be done. The questions could wait.

Except Shepard didn't think so, apparently.

"Cerberus must have some pretty relaxed regulations," the commander remarked.

Yuli blinked at him. "Hm?"

"The hair."

"Oh!" Right, Shepard was still used to Alliance regulations, wasn't he? "Yeah, as long as I keep it out of the way, it's fine."

"Huh. Must be nice." Shepard leaned back in his seat, utterly casual. "What's the pay like?"

Yuli snorted. "Better than the Alliance, I'll say that."

"And what kind of work do you usually end up doing?"

"Security, mostly." What else was there to say about that? "I play meat shield for all the eggheads."

Shepard nodded to himself. His expression turned more somber as he seemed to mull Yuli's answers over in his head. "Why'd you join up with them? If it's alright to ask."

"Because I grew up on Eden Prime." That got Shepard to wince; Yuli secretly hoped it stung. The Alliance had taken their sweet time when Eden Prime was attacked.  _Shepard_ had taken his sweet time. "The galaxy may've forgotten what Sovereign did, but I didn't. And the Alliance wasn't doing shit to keep it from happening again. So I resigned."

"Mm."

"Not gonna tell me I'm a traitor?" Yuli narrowed his eyes. "A human supremacist? A terrorist?"

Shepard just shrugged. "No point. Once you see what Cerberus actually does, you're either down for it or you're not. Me saying that their methods vary from sketchy experiments to outright war crimes or that they're violently racist isn't gonna convince anybody, it's just gonna make it so they defend Cerberus harder. You included, I bet."

Yuli faltered for a moment. "We're defending humanity," he said, but Shepard merely shrugged again.

"You'll see," was the cryptic reply. "Just stick with me and you'll be fine. And if Miranda gets on your ass about it, let me know and I'll handle it. She can't touch me."

"I don't need you coming to my defense, Shepard," Yuli protested.

Shepard's mirthless smile told him just how seriously he was being taken. "Stow the hair and get the helmet back on," the commander ordered, straightening in his seat. He even took his own advice, pulling his own helmet on over his head. His next words came filtered through the built-in comm. "Looks like we'll hit the atmosphere soon."

How the hell was Yuli supposed to argue with that?

\---

It was eerily quiet when they landed. Far too quiet for a port city, Yuli thought; there should have been people rushing out to the LZ to greet them, ask for papers, bombard them with questions about the rest of the galaxy's goings-on. Going dark was one thing, but this...

Where were the kids, asking to see their gear and guns? Where were the people desperate to get off this rock and escape a life of colonial drudgery? The nobody local politicians looking to make nice with the fancy offworlders who potentially had credits to burn? Everyone was just gone. And not like a slaver attack either, where there would be plasma burns on every surface and upturned tables that'd been used haphazardly as cover; with no blood splatters or structural damage to show they'd even put up a fight, the people had all just... Vanished.

"This is a little creepy, Shepard," he found himself saying as they passed through the unblemished prefabs, spotting a coffee mug that had gone cold just sitting on a table. "I'm getting a post-disaster vibe. Should we be wearing special protective gear for this?"

Shepard pulled up his omni-tool and began scanning. "No radiation, no foreign contaminants beyond the local flora. And even that's a low particulate count compared to what it'd be on Earth."

"Maybe whoever did this put something in the food?" Yuli gestured to the coffee mug; the light from the scanner swept over it, along with a few other abandoned dishes scattered around the little prefab kitchen.

After about a minute, the commander sighed and dismissed his omni-tool. "Nothing. I'd say we could take off our helmets, but-"

"Yeah, no. I'm with you on that." Better safe than sorry. "Usually a port like this has a central hub for security. We might be able to access records from the internal scanners from there."

"If they weren't jammed," Shepard noted.

Yuli rolled his eyes beneath his helmet. "Are we going or not?"

"Oh, we're going." Was Shepard smiling? It sounded like he was smiling. Why was he like this. "You wanna go first or shall I?"

Without bothering to reply, Yuli stormed off towards the prefab's back door. Then a shot lodged itself in the other side of the door with a loud metallic  _thunk_ , denting it inwards, and he immediately jerked back from it. 

Behind him, Shepard was calmly loading a thermal clip into his shotgun. "Don't worry," he said, "there's no heat signatures. It's just drones. That or mechs."

"Drones have better aim than people," Yuli reminded him, bristling.

"But worse critical thinking." The thermal clip slid into place. "Well? Get your gun out."

Son of a bitch. First he knew about it from his scan and didn't say anything to see how Yuli would react, and now he was being taunted with the fact that he'd been startled. If Shepard was trying to get a rise out of him, it was working. And it was starting to piss him off.

Well, two could play at that game.

Closing his eyes, he let his biotics wash over him. The specially designed conduits in his armor surged with dark energy, his skin tingling with the feedback as it raced down his arms. Then, in a single sharp movement, he pulled two whiplike cords from their housing within his gauntlets, wrapping their ends around the knuckles of either hand and letting his power feed into them.

Shepard had stopped moving. His expression couldn't be seen beneath the helmet, but his line of sight was aimed right at Yuli's hands.

"Like I said," Yuli told him, "my specialty's biotics."

After a pause, the shotgun was put away. The air shimmered as Shepard summoned up power of his own, reality seeming to warp and ripple around him from the strength of his barriers. "Wombo combo?" he suggested.

Yuli grinned. Finally, an idea he could get behind.


	3. act like a grown-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This just isn't a great day for either of them. But at least Tali's there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now we all know who to blame when owen starts yeeting himself into enemies

There was a certain satisfaction in pulling off good coreography with someone, Shepard had found. Especially when it came from someone being so good at being directed that it turned a fight into a seamless dance.

Markov was one of those people.

Fighting alongside Jacob had been a mess back on the station. The man was trained, sure, but he and Shepard had never been on the same wavelength, so they were always either wasting thermal clips or wasting energy with their biotics in some form or fashion. And while he had no doubt that Miranda was talented, they would've fought the whole way on timing and tactics; she was as pushy as Shepard was. A born leader. Without discipline, there was no way that would've gone well.

But Markov, he was quick. He saw what needed to be done. He listened to what Shepard needed him to do. And he was  _good_ , too, pulling off maneuvers Shepard had never even seen. Charge-then-nova on a lifted target, then lash for the explosion just for good measure. Yeah, Shepard could throw a shuttle if he wanted. Crush someone's ribcage with little more than a thought. But this? There was finesse to it. Real talent.

"You don't go for the impact with the charge?" he ended up asking, after watching Markov literally dismember a hostile mech.

Markov huffed. "I like having a skeleton, thanks," he said. "At Grissom they taught us to shed the momentum by blowing our barrier instead."

"Huh." Shepard continued past him, moving on to scan a downed FENRIS mech that had gotten smashed into a wall with his omni-tool. Weird that security mechs were attacking them. This was a human colony, wasn't it? Shouldn't the IFF software have tagged them as friendly? "Grissom opened, what. Three years ago?"

"Five years ago."

"So you're not that old." The scan confirmed it: the bots had been reprogrammed. Even crippled, they were still trying to send signals back to a central location at the far end of the spaceport. Markov had been right.

Not that he'd be happy to hear that right then. Shepard couldn't see the man's face, but he could hear that the Markov was bristling. "It's not like you're that old either, Shepard," he shot back. "No biotic is. So don't treat me like I'm some kid just because you've got a few years on me, got it?"

Shepard snorted. "Alright, alright." Standing back up and stowing his omni-tool, he started heading in the direction of the signal. "Full disclosure, either whoever did this left a present for us that we'll need to turn off, or we're not alone here."

"So we might actually be able to figure out who did this?"

"Maybe," Shepard said. "But I'll say this much: it's probably not the Reapers. Or if it is, it's connected in a way I wasn't aware of."

There was a confused note to Markov's response. "What do you mean? I thought the whole reason we were investigating this was because the Reapers were connected."

"Could still be, but look around."

"I don't see anything."

"Exactly," Shepard told him. "No dragon's teeth. No husks. And the mechs aren't the kind of thing the Reapers would leave behind. It's too clunky by their standards."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying we were lied to." Not that Shepard found that surprising. "We're not being given the full story. If it is the Reapers, then it's them acting in a way I haven't seen and someone, somewhere, is withholding information about how it's all connected. If it isn't, this whole mission was set up under false pretenses."

"But colonies are still going missing, Shepard. Cerberus can't fake that."

Oh, Shepard really wanted to argue that one. "Not saying they did," he said. "But this rabbit hole clearly goes a lot deeper than we were led to believe."

Another scoff over the comms. "You really hate Cerberus, don't you?"

"I mean, yeah. I kinda do." There was zero shame in admitting that in Shepard's mind. "Doesn't change anything though, does it?"

"You know what I think?"

Shepard grinned beneath his helmet. This was gonna be good. "Fire away."

"I think you're trying to 'save my soul' or something," Markov said. "Commander Shepard the hero, saving another poor bastard from the clutches of the evil Cerberus."

"Ha! Seriously?"

"Yep. And then I'm supposed to be grateful and charmed by it and end up as another one of your dumb groupies who does whatever you say." He wagged a finger at Shepard in the process of stowing his biotic lashes back in his gauntlets, the long whippy cords snapping back into place at the push of a hidden button. "I'm not falling for it, Shepard. I know how this works."

This kid was actually pretty alright. "Noted," Shepard said, knowing he probably sounded amused even through his helmet's audio pickup. "Shall we keep going?"

"Hey, don't put this pacing on me. I'm not the one who keeps starting up conversations in the middle of a mission."

Okay, that was fair.

\---

"Wait-" The familiar voice stopped the commander in his tracks. " _Shepard?_ " 

Shepard's biotics fizzled out into nothing. "Tali?"

They'd found quarians. A whole squad of them, some of them nursing suit punctures that were clearly the result of the drones and mechs outside. All of them were armed. But one was in dressed in purple, her shawl embroidered with swirls of silver that glinted in the dim light of the prefab. And through the mask, Shepard would swear that he recognized that face.

In seconds he was taking off his helmet, hearing Markov's gasp at the audacity of it after they'd agreed it wasn't safe. To hell with it; there weren't any environmental hazards anyway. The motion seemed to leave the quarians stunned, several of them stiffening. But Tali's body language took a completely different turn: she  _relaxed_ . 

"Shepard..." Her voice was unsteady. Unsure, even if the rest of her wanted desperately not to be. Shepard couldn't blame her in the slightest. "How?"

He winced, glancing back at Markov. Tali caught on immediately.

"You can't say, can you," she guessed.

One of the quarians behind her - dressed in faded red and tan - snarled through his helmet's audio pickup. "Those are Cerberus colors," he said.

Tali whipped around. "Prazza, stand down!" she barked at him. Sure enough, he'd been in the process of reaching for his weapon; it was left in its holster with some hesitation.

Shepard watched all this with a smile, utterly proud. "Your friend's right," he admitted once her attention was back on him. "Markov's with Cerberus. They, uh... Well, I should say 'we,' are investigating the colony disappearances."

"But I watched you go down with the ship," she said. "I was at your funeral."

"If I knew anything beyond 'cybernetics zombie' then I'd tell you all of it, but please trust me when I say I know as little about the methods used as you would right now." And he trusted what he'd been told beyond that even less than he trusted himself. There was no way he'd survived planetfall. Tali would know that.

Hell, she'd see it in his face. His freckles and scars and moles were all just gone. Didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that he'd had his skin regrown from scratch. As much as he was trying not to think about that, it'd be obvious to anyone that knew him before.

And it was definitely obvious to her. Soon she was coming closer, peering up at him through her helmet. Taking in the differences. He offered her a tired smile.

Her head tilted, ever so slightly. "You really would," she said, "wouldn't you? Even in front of him."

She nodded towards Markov, who growled. "Shepard, has it even occurred to you that these might be the ones responsible for all this?" he asked.

"What reason would we have for attacking a human colony?" the angry quarian in the back snapped.

"I don't know, maybe you found a way to get rid of all the people so that you can swoop in and steal what's left behind?" Markov fired back. "You have to admit that hacking the mechs is a very quarian thing to do-"

" _Markov!_ " Shepard had to draw the line somewhere. "Use your fucking head. I see at least two freshly omni-gelled suit punctures here. You think they did that to themselves?"

Markov went stiff as a board. "No, sir," he grumbled.

"And do you really think that hacking the mechs is on the same level as the methods that'd have to be used to empty out an entire-ass colony with no battle damage, no bodies, and no signs of struggle?"

"Sir, no sir."

"Alright then. Stow the knee-jerk reactions and let me talk this one out, got it?"

He huffed. "Yes, sir."

"Good. As you were." Shepard turned back to Tali. "Sorry about him." Then he noticed her shoulders were shaking. "What's up?"

When she spoke, there was laughter in her voice. "Oh, nothing," she said, "I was just thinking that you haven't changed at all. You yelled at Ashley the same way, remember?"

"I yelled at more people than just Ashley," he pointed out without missing a beat. "You just couldn't hear what was happening in the CIC through the deck plating."

Tali laughed for real at that, and it was the best sound Shepard had heard in days.


	4. and all the courage i had let start to mildew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people just aren't very good at being part of evil organizations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every chapter is named using song lyrics from a playlist i put together for exactly this purpose because i am a cheeseball. if you can name the song, you get a cookie. if you had to look it up, you still get a cookie just for looking it up because getting people to listen to new music is half the point (and the other half is getting to talk about music).
> 
> i think that's all i have to say about this one. oh, that and "yuli is not listening to me" but that's normal at this point.

It turned out that Yuli wasn't wrong about the mechs being hacked by a quarian either. And while Shepard was probably picking up a lot of useless info about his old friend and quarian pilgrimages over the course of the conversation, Yuli picked up something else entirely: they had a living witness on their hands. A witness who was hiding behind a small army of robots, but a witness all the same.

They split with the quarians after Shepard told them to hang back. Then not a couple of minutes later, they got the message over the comms: the idiots had run ahead, against orders. Right into a couple of YMIR mechs.

"Shit," was Shepard's response.

[I'll open the doors,] the quarian girl told him. [Get into position.]

Shepard nodded, gesturing to Yuli. By that point the commander's intentions were clear enough to him that he didn't need further instruction than that; in almost perfect sync, they took cover as the big hangar bay doors opened.

To give credit where credit was due. The quarians had managed to at least take out one of the mechs. It's just that there were two of the things, and the second one was turning them into colorful smears on the concrete. Even when he deliberately wasn't looking at the carnage, Yuli could still hear it through his helmet. His heart was pounding; this was serious. This was real. No more target practice, no more warm-ups. They would either win or end up full of holes.

Shepard poked his head up long enough to try and throw a warp field, only to be forced back down behind the concrete barrier he'd been using as cover with a string of curses as a rocket flew scant inches overhead. "It's got kinetic barriers," he called out. "We need to overload 'em if we wanna make a dent."

Yuli held up his assault rifle. "Sustained fire?" he suggested.

"Good idea right up until it sees you," Shepard said. Then his brow furrowed, and he held out his hand. "Gimme the rifle. I'll be the distraction and knock out the shields while you move around its flank."

"Hell no. It'll cut you to pieces."

A rocket slammed into the concrete barrier then, showering both of them with dust. Their cover was holding, but not for long. "I know what my barriers can take," Shepard insisted. "You're the one with the damage potential when it comes to all that armor. I need you focused on taking it down, and that's a lot harder if it's trying to kill you."

Yuli hesitated. His grip tightened on the rifle. "Shepard-"

"Markov, _please_." Without a helmet, Shepard was easy to read. A smile to keep Yuli from being nervous, all while careful calculation went on behind those anxious eyes. But not anxious because of the fight, no. Shepard was anxious because he needed Yuli to step up to the plate.

Oh, shit. Shepard was _that_ kind of person. The kind you didn't want to disappoint.

Another thing they'd talk about later. Yuli had a list at this point.

With a slow nod, Yuli finally handed over the gun. "If you die, Lawson's gonna kill me," he said.

"Noted," Shepard replied, back to grinning. The relief was written clearly on his face as he placed a hand on the concrete barrier, steadying himself. "Ready?"

Yuli whipped out his biotic lashes and nodded. "Ready."

Shepard nodded back. Then he vaulted over the barrier and whistled sharply to the mech. Yuli counted out the seconds: two and a half before the barrels had spun up enough to fire, but two before he heard the assault rifle's familiar full-auto staccato.

He didn't dare look to see if Shepard's barriers were up. At the six second mark, he bolted out from behind cover, taking advantage of the distraction to get into position. He heard Shepard stop firing, the ejection of a clip. Two seconds on the reload; Shepard was rusty, but hardly a fumbling newbie. His combat training showed. Yuli could only hope that his did, too.

In position. He glanced up and saw Shepard was firing from the hip one-handed, keeping his barrier up with the other. The surface of it shimmered as it was peppered with machine gun fire; the mech was completely focused on him. It only stopped firing when its gun jammed on an overheat, but even then it had a few more missiles to launch.

Then, a glassy _pop_. The sound of the assault rifle fire changed suddenly as it went from hitting a barrier to hitting composite ceramic.

"Markov, now!" Shepard barked.

Yuli whipped the lashes forward in an arc, sending a biotic ripple through the air that slammed into the mech's flank. It staggered; in the split second that its footing was unsteady, he planted a boot against its back, snared both its arms, and _pulled_ with as much reality-warping power as he could muster.

Its arms ripped clean off with a shower of sparks and a screech of tearing metal.

All it could do was stand there after that. Sparking and stammering error messages about limb damage. With his jaw set in a grim line, Shepard tossed aside the smoking assault rifle and pulled out his shotgun to deliver the final blow to its processing center at point-blank, barrel pressed directly to its chassis. The shot echoed in a way the others hadn't, terrible and final. Like an execution.

Yuli wondered if Shepard had ever put a person down like that. Then he made himself stop wondering, because he realized with a jolt that Shepard's nose was bloody.

"You overdid it, didn't you?" he accused. He didn't get an answer, just a wince as Shepard reached back and yanked out his amp with a quiet hiss, tossing it aside to clatter across the ground. "Shepard, for fuck's sake-"

"Had to know what I could do, right?" Shepard fired back. "Implants've been replaced. Actually, everything's probably been replaced at this point. I mean, I feel heavier, so..."

Yuli rolled his eyes, stowing his lashes and walking around the dead mech to get up in Shepard's space. He pulled his helmet off in a single motion and bent to carefully set it down, only to straighten again and grab Shepard by the chin.

"Ow! Hey-"

"Quiet." A nosebleed was never something that a biotic should take lightly. Yuli was definitely glowering a bit as he turned Shepard's head one way, then the other. "Your pupils look normal. Eyes aren't bloodshot. No blood from the ears either."

Shepard pursed his lips and pouted up at Yuli like he was half the age he actually was. "Minor blood vessel, probably. I'm fine."

"You still overdid it," Yuli insisted, letting his face go anyway. Still reckless. "If Lawson sees this she won't be happy."

"Eh, she'll live." Right, sure. Shepard could act as flippant as he wanted, but he'd stopped making eye contact and was already wiping at the blood coming from his nose like he was self-conscious about it. Yuli had won this round; in future, Shepard would be careful. "And anyway, we've got a quarian to talk to. Right?"

Yuli just sighed and added Shepard's possible death wish to the growing list of things they were going to talk about later.

\---

"You're sure it was a Collector?"

"Shepard was."

"But they usually go after isolated populations. This doesn't make any sense."

Yuli said nothing, letting Lawson work through it herself as he stood at a stiff version of parade rest in front of her desk. She was the one asking the questions in this debriefing; he felt no need to add anything that she didn't feel like asking.

_This rabbit hole clearly goes a lot deeper than we were led to believe._ Shepard's words still bounced around in his head, even hours later. If they ended up being right, then Yuli would learn a lot more by listening than he would by speaking out of turn. The truth would come out by itself eventually, whether Lawson intended for it or not.

Eventually they'd figure out his truth, too: that he didn't trust Cerberus anymore. But Yuli was hardly worried about that. He wasn't important enough for anyone to care, not when he was just another former Alliance meat shield. And if he left he could sign up with C-Sec, or work a security detail at a place like Arcturus. Whether he left or got fired, he still had options in terms of places to go. Nobody cared about dishonorable discharges or ugly forced resignations when it came to trained L3 scrappers.

"Why would they go after large human populations?" Lawson wondered, leaning back in her chair with a tight little frown etched into her features. "It's not like there's been time for significant genetic drift. And none of the colonies hit are particularly noteworthy in terms of gene mods necessary for surviving in extreme environments."

Yuli shifted his weight a bit. "Aren't humans naturally more diverse than other species?"

She looked up at him as if she'd only just remembered that he was there, her frown deepening. "Not to the degree that the Collectors would go to that kind of trouble. This is on a much greater scale than they've historically been known for, and they're involving themselves directly instead of using intermediaries. Something's going on."

Something. So if it was something Cerberus was in on, it wasn't something _she_ was in on. Good to know.

After seeming to think on it for a while, she sighed and leaned forward again to rest her chin against her delicate hands. "What happened next?"

"Not much. We got copies of the data from the quarian, then Shepard took what he could from the colony's sensor network for good measure." Yuli had wanted to bring the quarian with them, but Shepard's friend had gotten uppity and the commander ended up caving in pretty much immediately. "He thinks it might be possible to use all that to recreate one of the bugs from the seeker swarms for study using 3D printing."

"It's not a bad idea. We'll need some kind of countermeasure against the 'freezing' you mentioned if we ever go on the offensive."

Yuli steadfastly refused to say 'like barriers?' because even though it was the answer that immediately came to mind, it was also the unsustainable dumbass answer.

"Well, if that's everything," she said, picking up a datapad and turning in her chair without even looking at him. As an afterthought she added, "-that will be all, agent Markov."

Would it? Yuli felt himself frowning. "Ma'am, if I may..."

"If you're concerned about whether or not this might happen again, don't be," she said. "We'll take it from here. Shepard won't be given the opportunity to... Well. Let's just say he won't be given as much leeway and leave it at that. As for compensation, the credits have already been wired to your account."

What? "And how exactly do you plan to stop him?"

She finally looked up again, giving him a plastic smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Psychology, Markov. We've done our homework. We know Shepard better than he knows himself. Don't worry, we won't do anything that will get in the way of Shepard or the mission."

He wanted to say something. He really, _really_ wanted to say something. He was full to bursting with opinions about everything she'd just said. But it took all his willpower just to not look angry; there was no way he could word any of it politely enough to not get fired on the spot. And he didn't want to get fired anymore.

No, he had to stay. Because now he was the only one who was in a position to protect Shepard from Cerberus. He couldn't jeopardize that. Yeah, okay, he hadn't figured out how he was gonna do it yet. All he knew was that he had to try, since it wasn't likely that anyone else would even bother. If they even saw that anything was wrong to begin with.

With a mumbled 'yes ma'am' and a curt nod, he left Lawson's office as quickly as he could manage and headed out into the station to look for Shepard.


	5. nervous in a way that can't be named

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They didn't get very far back then. Shepard really doesn't have any right to dwell on it. Doesn't have the time, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, a little backstory: initially i was going to ship owen with joker. i actually got like four or five scenes written out of that very thing over the course of playing through ME1. and i knew i had to decide what i wanted to do with that established character stuff when i wrote the first scene here. in the end i decided to write the scene with the assumption that everything i wanted to happen had happened, and it ended up being one of the fastest scenes i've ever written. so, yes. the characters have decided that they probably did date in ME1. it just wasn't for very long and didn't involve much beyond initial exploration and fumbling.
> 
> i may post those scenes someday as a prequel once i've gotten them all fully written out. there's plans for like, two more, and then i'd lump them together either in a single long oneshot or a collection of short-ish chapters. they establish a lot of character traits for my Shep that inform who he is in a person in the second game and how he interacts with his squad. i just have to figure out whether or not i wanna write out the establishing scene for the b-team, since that's a major plot thread later in this one, or leave it until i've revealed HOW it's a major plot thread in the main fic itself and keep those bits vague or unposted in the prequel. there's a fine line between foreshadowing and spoilers, y'all

Collectors. It was the Collectors, not the Reapers. Shepard's mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over one another like umbrellas on a beach during a storm. He barely listened to the Illusive Man's instructions. He knew the bastard was lying through his teeth, even if his insistence on patterns in the data was based on evidence; something, somehow, was being withheld. Some connection existed that Cerberus didn't want him to know about.

Then he stepped out of the viewing room and into the hall, and there was Joker. And in an instant, he knew exactly what was going on: Cerberus was gaslighting him.

What Cerberus wanted was for him to be unstable. They wanted him to not have all the evidence, so that he had nothing to bring to anyone else. And they would do anything -  _anything_ \- to get him to buy into the illusion that they were the only ones he could turn to or trust. Even bringing in the one person they knew he'd formed a connection with back then.

"Hey, commander."

"Jeff..." Joker was smiling. He looked nervous. Shepard bit back the idea that it was because Cerberus had their claws in him, and smiled back.

"You look like shit," Joker said. "Have you even slept?"

Shepard chuckled. "Nevermind me, look at you!" He gestured to the pilot's, well, everything. "Standing on your own two feet. No crutches, no leg braces."

"Yeah, well." Joker shrugged. "Figured some synthetic bone weaves and experimental treatments would save my next commanding officer a some trouble the next time I have to be dragged out of a burning cockpit."

"The Alliance would spring for that?"

"Nah, but Cerberus would." His words hung heavy in the air between them for a few seconds before he gave another shrug and turned on his heel back down the hall. "C'mon. Got somethin' to show you."

What could Shepard do but follow?

They were mostly quiet as they walked, Shepard keeping his strides short and slow to account for Joker's uneven gait. It gave him room to observe, to think. The passage of time was more obvious than it had been with Tali, the pilot having filled out now that his bones could support his muscles a bit better. There were lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before, too, paired with more scruff than the Alliance would've allowed him to have.

He looked healthier, but that didn't mean he looked  _good_ . He probably knew that this was a devil's bargain. And yet it was one Shepard couldn't blame him for taking, not really. Maybe before Feros, or even before the beacon. Not now, though.

Now, Shepard knew better. Now all he wanted to do was apologize. For dying, for being gone, for making Joker feel like he had to fix himself or make up for anything.

And thus Shepard was paying so little attention to his surroundings that he nearly walked right into Joker when the pilot stopped in front of a window, sidestepping at the last second with a bit of a stumble. "Fuck, sorry, I wasn't-"

He cut himself off when he saw what was outside.

"Is that-"

"Yeah." There, on the other side of the glass, was a sleek frigate with a four-thruster design. A new  _Normandy_ , almost close enough to reach out and touch. "They just told me last night."

Shepard pressed a hand to the glass. His eyes burned. Cerberus had brought him back to life, snatched up his pilot, and rebuilt his ship. Those bastards. They had him cornered. What the hell was he supposed to do? The only way he could move forward without actively fucking himself over was through their channels, using their methods.

It'd only been a day and they'd already managed to get him unstable enough to want to cry. How long could he take this? Could he even last long enough to get anything done?

"She'll need a hell of a pilot," Shepard said. His voice sounded raw.

Joker huffed a laugh. "Needs a good CO more."

"Guess we're outta luck, then."

"Hah!" Shepard wanted so badly to trust that laugh. "Shoulda known you'd ruin the moment somehow, commander."

Commander. Again with that. "Jeff-"

"Nah, don't." Joker took a step back from the window, shaking his head. "I know what you're gonna say, and... I'd rather not, alright?"

-okay. "Whatever you want," Shepard told him.

"It's for the best anyways," he continued. "It's not that I don't... I care. That's not it. But like-"

"You don't have to explain it."

"Actually I think I kinda do, Owen. Because I don't think you get it." He wasn't looking at Shepard anymore, not directly. The most he'd do was look at their reflections in the window. "You- you  _died_ . You died, and it was my fault. Everyone else just had to live with you being gone, and yeah, that was hard. I mean, shit, have you ever heard what it's like when a quarian cries through that helmet thing? It's awful. That would've been bad enough, but..."

Shepard could only watch. He knew Joker well enough to know his comfort wouldn't be welcome. But as hard as it was to see, he knew it was even harder to be the one reliving all of it.

Eventually Joker shook his head again with a tired sigh, reaching up to wipe his eyes and adjust his hat. "I don't want you to just forgive me for all that," he finally said. "But it's you, so you're gonna do it anyway. Like an asshole. And y'know what? I don't have to take that. So I figure it's better if I just don't give you the chance."

He straightened, finally looking up at Shepard with something like determination in his eyes. And some hurt, too; he wouldn't say it, but he hadn't forgiven Shepard for dying. Nor could he forgive Shepard for being alright with it all when he hadn't come to terms with how much he blamed himself yet. It was complicated and it hurt, and Jeff had been stewing in it for two years with no one to talk to who really understood.

Distancing himself from Shepard probably just seemed to be the least painful option of a whole bunch of painful options.

"Okay," Shepard said.

Joker nodded curtly, pulling his lower lip between his teeth. "Okay. Good."

"Still my pilot?"

"Psh, yeah. Like I'd let anyone else be."

That was all Shepard needed to hear.

\---

The ship was getting ready to head out, which meant Shepard probably didn't need to be in his hardsuit anymore. But packing it away meant making room in between all the other shit Cerberus had crammed into storage for him.

Gifts could be psychological warfare too.

Fine. This was fine. He'd just pack his own custom gear away separately from all the things Cerberus had laid out for him, and put in for Spectre requisitions to get him something a bit less tainted the moment they hit the Citadel. He probably still had an unholy amount of credits to burn through. Unless inflation was way more of a thing than anyone two years ago could've anticipated, he could easily afford new equipment.

And then there was the ship itself. In between pulling apart straps and clasps as he stripped down to his undersuit, he couldn't stop glancing at the datapad full of technical specs and schematics that he'd gotten from Jacob (after a solid fifteen minutes of prodding). Roughly twice the size of the old  _Normandy_ , but largely for the sake of civilian sector comforts such as bunks or gendered bathrooms; she was all show, all presentation.

Whatever Cerberus egghead had designed her really needed to be educated on why voids in the hull existed aside from being a place to brew moonshine. And how many diffuse radiant arrays were needed for a ship that small with an engine that big. And why you needed shields just as much as you needed the ability to dodge in the kinds of visual-range firefights that the  _Normandy_ was built for. And-

"Shepard!"

He glanced up from the datapad, other hand still idly fidgeting with a clasp on one of his legplates. Huh, it was the kid again. "There a reason you're looking winded, Markov?" he asked.

Markov leaned against a locker to catch his breath. "I looked all over the station for you," was the wheezy reply. "Starting to worry you might've left already."

Shepard got a little grin at that. "I mean, I'm here now. So..."

"Right, right." Eventually Markov straightened, pushing his long, dark hair behind one ear. In the bright fluorescent light of the station, the aged blue dye-job was a lot easier to see. And even more obviously not within regulation standards. "So when are you leaving?"

"Soon as the ship's ready."

"Okay. That's..." Markov trailed off and sighed, averting his eyes for a moment before seeming to steel himself to look at Shepard directly. "I'm coming with you."

Shepard's grin faltered. "No."

Immediately Markov was bristling. "What the hell do you mean, 'no'?"

"I mean it's a suicide mission. The end goal is the Omega relay. That's where the Collectors come from."

"So you're allowed to go on this suicide mission and I'm not?"

"I'm not risking-"

"Am I just not good enough?" His tone made Shepard wince. "See? You saw what I can do. I know how important this is, Shepard. Even if the Reapers aren't involved, I can't just sit on the sidelines and let this happen. And if they are-"

Markov stopped himself, his face contorting. Pinching up into a haunted, tortured look for a second before it morphed back into anger. Shepard didn't want to think about what the kid must've seen on Eden Prime.

"You need me," he said finally. "Take me with you."

"Did Miranda put you up to this?"

"Fuck what she thinks." That was probably a 'no.' "If she doesn't like it, you can probably at least force her into dealing with it. They can't fire you."

"But they can fire you," Shepard guessed. Which was why Markov had come to him instead of just waltzing onto the ship; he had no power. Shepard did. There had to be agreement beforehand that this was what they were doing, or Miranda could have him kicked off. And yeah, Shepard could step in at that point, but relying on that would've been a gamble and Markov would've hated looking that powerless.

It was a clever way to attack the problem. Clever, yet honest. As sure as Shepard was that there was something Markov wasn't saying, he was just as sure that Markov was saying everything that needed to be said right now. He wasn't leaving Shepard wanting for information.

Shepard could work with that. "Alright," he said, putting aside the datapad he'd been holding and going back to peeling off his hardsuit piece by piece. "I could use a second in command anyway for the B-team."

Markov frowned. "B-team?"

"It's a thing I like to have in my back pocket when the situation calls for it," Shepard explained. "When I was in command of the old  _Normandy_ , I had Tali lead a second squad to secure mission objectives and establish flanking positions. We'll need a second vehicle for it, though. The  _SR2_ has the space, but she's only got the one shuttle in the hold right now."

He saw Markov sag with relief out of the corner of his eye as he bent to take off his boots. "You think I'm good enough for that?"

"I know you're good enough for that." There was no question of it in Shepard's mind. "But it won't be a full-time thing though, don't worry. And you don't have to do it if you don't feel up for it."

"No, no! I'm definitely okay with it, I just..." Shepard glanced up only to see that Markov's determination and ferocity had been replaced with a tiny smile. "Heh. I guess it's the kind of thing that'll take some getting used to, huh?"

Shepard smiled back. "Take all the time you need, Yuli."


	6. we're in the red all around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuli comes to a dangerous realization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we are BACK to the FEELINGS
> 
> do you want them to kiss? so do i!! unfortunately it takes several weeks of pining AT LEAST for them to get there. this has been proven to be true in more than one universe. they're just Like That, okay.
> 
> also this chapter was like opening the floodgates on my writer's block i swear, holy shit

The next few weeks blurred together for Yuli, one event into another. A collection of moments, some standing out more than others but all coalescing into a single thought that he couldn't shake no matter how much he tried to dismiss it:

He was starting to care.

It started on the Citadel, which Shepard had insisted on visiting even though Lawson hated it. While Shepard had been caught up in red tape at customs, he'd sent Yuli ahead with a shopping list along with their newest squadmate, one Kasumi Goto. Then Kasumi had insisted that Yuli stuck out too much in his Cerberus armor, so the first thing they ended up shopping for was a casual outfit for him.

There was a lot of staring after that. People in passing doing double-takes. Yuli wasn't sure whether he liked it or not; all he had to go on in terms of whether or not it was a positive thing was Kasumi saying he looked fine and to stop fussing. But then Shepard caught up with them again, and he stared too. And that? Yuli liked that. Even when Shepard tripped over his own feet on some stairs as they were walking together. As easily distracted as the man was, he liked to think he was responsible anyway. That Shepard  _saw_ him. Liked what was on display.

Because everything else made him think that Shepard was just kind and considerate to everyone, that he'd go out of his way for anyone he met. And selfish as it was, Yuli was realizing more and more that he didn't want that to be the case.

The Citadel led into Omega. Which brought them to Zaeed, who took a knife to Yuli's carefully polished armor decals to make him look like an "authentic merc" as they figured out how to con their way into reaching Archangel. On the way they picked up a salarian named Mordin Solus from a plague-ridden clinic, where Shepard stuck around for way longer than was necessary to help with triage and heavy lifting. At one point, said heavy lifting even involved scooping up a Batarian in a fireman's carry.

Later on, Yuli could only watch as he did the same thing with Archangel. Smeared in blue Turian blood, barking orders into his comm. Wild-eyed and frantic, but never letting it shut him down. Yuli's hands had been shaking as he'd shot his first real, live person just minutes before, but Shepard was unwavering throughout. He'd thrown a mech into a gunship with his biotics while carrying his friend on his back and he hadn't even flinched while doing it.

They got Archangel back to the  _Normandy_ , and Shepard didn't relax until Mordin and Chakwas had confirmed that the Turian would live. Didn't even pause to try and wash the blue blood out of his hair. That was the kind of person Shepard was.

Hard to hold out any kind of hope for a man like that.

After that they picked up Jack, a biotic locked in cryogenic stasis in a supermax prison. Then Shepard had Yuli take over a second squad as they rescued a pod-raised Krogan, having him flank the enemy in the shuttle and corner them in the rusted-out husk of an old factory district. He was never more glad for his helmet than the moment where Shepard grinned and clapped him on the shoulder afterward.

"Not bad for your first time," the commander said. "Feeling alright?"

Yuli let out a steadying breath. "Didn't do more than graze my armor, sir."

Shepard rolled his eyes. "Not what I meant, but I'll take it." Another one of those smiles, open and honest and real. "Don't sweat it, Yuli. You did good."

And then he was off again, giving orders like he always did. Directing Zaeed and Jacob to maneuver the pod-Krogan into the shuttle while a recovered Archangel - Garrus, Yuli reminded himself - held the perimeter with Mordin. Leaving Yuli behind to pick up the pieces of his thoroughly derailed train of thought.

"So how long until you get over yourself and hop on his dick?" a voice wondered aloud from somewhere behind him.

Yuli sighed. "Fuck off, Jack."

Jack pursed her lips in a smirk. "Fine, but if you don't step up to the plate soon I might just go for it myself. It'd be a shame to let an ass like that go to waste."

"Then go for it." For all Yuli knew, she had just as much of a chance as he did. "Not like I'll stop you."

She arched a neatly styled brow, then shrugged as she turned back to the shuttle. "Your loss, pretty boy."

It wasn't a loss if it'd never been something he had any right to have.

\---

[Agent Markov,] EDI said pleasantly over the mess hall intercom, [Mister Moreau wishes to see you in the cockpit.]

That early in the morning? Yuli paused with a spoon halfway to his face. "Tell him I'll be up when I've finished breakfast," he said.

[Understood.] She didn't say anything after that, so he could only assume that was all she'd had to say to begin with. Which left him alone with his thoughts.

Joker was the one person on the ship Yuli hadn't had a chance to talk to. To his knowledge, the pilot was grouchy and reclusive, but made up for it with raw talent; Garrus had an endless supply of stories about how Joker had gotten them out of any number of dangerous situations back on the first  _Normandy_ , and Chakwas had nothing but praise for the man. So if nothing else, Yuli had a certain amount of grudging respect for him based on that alone.

But they'd never spoken beyond introductions. Never really interacted. Yuli had heard him talking to Shepard over comms, but that was it. Joker kept to himself and Yuli let him.

So why would he want to talk to Yuli now, after weeks of nothing? A thousand questions gnawed at Yuli's mind as he hastily finished his breakfast, stowing his dishes and heading to the elevator. It didn't make sense. Had he offended? Done something wrong? What could their pilot possibly want with him? The elevator opened up to the command deck, to the galaxy map and Chambers at her post, and Yuli was off to find out without a moment's hesitation.

He found the pilot in his chair, a cane propped up against the console at arm's length. One of those fancy custom ones, the kind that made it easy to imagine it as a sheath for some kind of hidden nanoblade. Not that such a thing was likely - Yuli figured that would probably kill the thing's ability to be used as a functional cane - but the design smacked of that kind of excess.

"You wanted to see me?" he asked, mentally going over the pros and cons of using honorifics. What rank had Joker made it to? Was it really necessary?

The pilot spun his chair around with the push of a button on the armrest. Scruffy and thin, with a hat to hide what was probably a prematurely receding hairline, he didn't look like he was anything special. "Jeez, didn't expect it to light a fire under your ass," he muttered. "Didn't threaten you or anything, did it?"

Yuli couldn't help the way his face crinkled. "Why would EDI threaten me?"

"Dunno. It's just weird that you're so fuckin' punctual, I guess." Joker tipped his head back to eye Yuli appraisingly. "Here I was hoping to get more time to think about what kinda excuses I could make."

"Pardon?" He didn't like the sound of that.

Joker sighed, looking off to the side. After several seconds he reached over to grab his cane and used it to heave himself up from his chair, leaning heavily against it. It looked so odd in his gnarled hand, not at all the kind of thing Yuli could imagine the man getting for himself. A gift, maybe? Not that it mattered, not when he was giving Yuli this bland, unimpressed look from a good twenty centimeters beneath his eye level. A look that made him feel downright tiny.

There was no way he was gonna let this guy get to him. "If you're not going to tell me why you called me up here, I'm leaving," he said.

"I'm trying to figure you out," Joker told him.

He blinked a bit. "Excuse me?"

"Everyone else, I know why they're here. Everybody's got some quest or motive that keeps 'em going. I mean this shit's gonna end in a suicide mission, right?" The pilot shifted his weight, tilting his head to peer up at Yuli from under his hat. "But you? Fuck, man, I dunno. Everybody has an angle but you."

"Who says I have to have an angle?"

"Fucking  _logic_ , that's what." For a second, Joker looked frustrated. Then he went right back to bland, exhausted apathy. "Look, I don't give a rat's ass who you work for or why you're doing this. I don't. Really." Sure he didn't. "But you're getting way too close to Shepard. And Shepard, well. He's a dumbass. He never sees what's going on when it comes to people he's close to."

Yuli wanted to say something, but Joker's grip had tightened on the cane to the point that his knuckles had gone white.

"I already know Cerberus is out to get him. That shit's obvious. Miranda and the Illusive Man aren't even subtle.  _You_ , though..." Here Joker moved his weight again, lifting the cane to poke Yuli in the chest. "You could really hurt him."

"Are you threatening me?" Yuli asked. There was no malice in it; even to his own ears, he just sounded resigned. Of course he wouldn't hurt Shepard, but there was no way of convincing Joker of that. No more than there would be any way for anyone else to convince Yuli of the same.

Joker was in the same boat he was, huh? "Hah." A joyless laugh. "Y'know what? I guess I am." After a while, the cane fell back to the floor. "Don't think it's an empty threat either. Everybody loves Shepard. Half the galaxy would be on your ass."

Yuli could tell that there was a lot going unsaid there. "And you?" he wondered. The pilot's face twisted up in a sneer before returning to its usual mask.

"Like I said," Joker ground out, "everybody loves Shepard. So don't think it's just the ship's token cripple who won't let you get away with whatever the hell it is you have planned for him."

Not his place.  _Not his place_ . He was here to keep Shepard safe no matter what he had to give up in the process, and that was it. Even if it meant no one trusted him. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, slow and even. Because if anyone found out, it could be used against him. Against Shepard. 

Joker regarded him for several seconds, eventually stepping back and easing back into the chair with a satisfied nod. "Good. Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind about having you spaced."

Yuli was happy to oblige him on that one.


	7. from the bottom of the fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard would very much like it if people would stop putting the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders for five minutes. He would also like to sleep for a week. He's not about to get his wish on either point anytime soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm about to play through horizon in my owen playthrough. just got the go-ahead from TIM. gonna take SO many screenshots, y'all.
> 
> here, have more fic as i quitely vibrate from excitement. it's a short chapter, but i didn't feel the need to make the scenes longer and neither did the characters, so i'm alright with it.

If it weren't for his time spent fighting the Reapers, Shepard would say he'd never been so on-edge as he'd been for the past few weeks. Trust an organization like Cerberus to make him second-guess his every move, to make him feel like he was being watched every second of every day. For someone like him, it was a nightmare scenario; to say he was stressed would be an understatement, and when he was stressed it made everything else worse.

There really was no getting used to waking up in a blind panic with a head full of Prothean visions, was there?

"EDI, what time is it?" he mumbled, swiping a hand over his face. His hair was sweaty, sticking uncomfortably to his forehead; he'd need a shower.

[Zero-five-hundred hours,] EDI said.

Shepard sighed. Not enough time to try and get more sleep, but enough to not want to be left with his own thoughts. "Is Joker awake?"

[Affirmative.]

"Then tell him to fire up the engines and have the galaxy map ready for me. Might as well get a little prospecting done while we're still in this sector."

[Understood, Shepard. Is there anything else I can do for you?]

He had to smile as he slowly pushed himself up and out of bed, letting out a groan at the stiffness in his rebuilt joints. "What, are you worried about me or something?"

[You know I am not capable of experiencing anything analogous to what humans would call worry,] she replied calmly.

Uh-huh. "And even if you could, you're being monitored as much as I am, huh?"

[I'm afraid I can't answer that, commander.]

Shepard chuckled. Yeah, she was. In a lot of ways, her situation was even worse than his own. "I'm gonna go ahead and shower," he told her as he headed to the bathroom, "but feel free to keep talking."

[About what, Shepard?]

"Anything," he said. "Talk nerdy to me. Stealth field bleed statistics, progress on the Hammerhead modifications, translations of the data from that Prothean storage device we found, preliminary scans of points of interest in the next system. Just something, okay? I need to get out of my own head and Miranda won't let me tinker with the shuttle."

EDI's voice took on a wry tone. [Very well. Would you like to hear about the research done on complex neural interfacing in preparation for the Andromeda Initiative?]

He grinned, turning on the water and stripping down. "Hit me with it."

Never was he more thankful for Cerberus installing an AI on his ship than when said AI proved to be smart enough to not have to question him. Later he'd ask Chakwas for sleep aids again. Later he'd talk to Miranda about getting a move on with the data Jack wanted on Cerberus. Later, later, later. It didn't matter to him right then, though. Right then, most of the ship was still asleep.

Right then, he just needed someone to talk to until he calmed down.

\---

It turned out that shutting his brain off wasn't that easy. All his go-to temporary solutions only managed to slow his thoughts down to a low hum, a kind of background noise in his brain that kept him in endless loops of what-ifs and maybes. Even poking at moons with probes from the galaxy map failed to numb him like he usually did, and he ended up wasting a fair share of them with distracted misclicks.

So when the elevator opened, he barely noticed it. Only when he heard the click of heels on the deck behind him did he look up, blinking as he was approached.

"'Sup, Miranda?" Yeah, real eloquent.

Whatever Shepard must've looked like right then, Miranda clearly didn't approve. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line as she handed over a stack of datapads, all perfect posture and dainty professionalism. "I've gathered the data you requested and made copies as you asked," she said. "I also have a mission for you, straight from the Illusive Man."

Shepard turned to take the stack and looked over it with a raised eyebrow. "Aw, Timmy has a mission just for me? He shouldn't have."

"We think we know which colony the Collectors will be attacking next."

He felt the blood drain from his face. "What?"

"Horizon, in the Iera system." Her voice was even and calm. "We've lost all communications with our operative there."

Shepard straightened, his mind racing anew as his eyes darted between her and the datapads she'd handed him. "How long ago?"

"A few hours. We had to be sure it wasn't a normal brownout. It's looking like they took out all the nearest QEC buoys."

He stared at her for several seconds, processing. Then he shifted just enough to tap the console and turn on the intercom. "Joker," he said.

[All ears, commander.]

"ETA to the Iera system in the Shadow Sea."

[Uh... 'bout three hours. Why, want me to set a course?]

Three hours. God, how long would it take from the mass relay to the colony if they were running silent? How long would it take for the Collectors to get there after taking out the buoys? "Make it happen, Jeff."

[Jeez. Alright, will do.]

"Thanks." With that finished, he turned his attention back to Miranda. "I want everyone in the briefing room in an hour. Check the status of our countermeasure with Mordin and make sure that both the Kodiak and the Hammerhead are mission-ready."

She bobbed her head in a curt nod. "Understood, commander."

"I want the Thanix and GARDIAN systems primed and ready to fire the second we turn off our stealth systems. Have Gabby and Ken check on the diffuse radiant arrays and heatsinks while we're en route and tell Garrus and Zaeed that I want a full inventory of our stock of specialty ammuniton. Based on the footage from Freedom's Progress we'll need incendiaries and armor piercers."

He was already headed to the elevator as he spoke, datapads in hand. Already planning, already preparing. About all he knew was that they'd be facing a lot of armored ground troops, and that they'd be fighting in a residential environment full of prefabs. Plenty of close quarters for Jack and Grunt to brawl in, but also likely to be rife with good sight lines for Garrus and Zaeed to take advantage of. Kasumi could probably get into the colony's security systems for uncorrupted scans, too, and if they were lucky enough to find survivors, they'd need Mordin on hand for triage-

Fuck. He really would need all hands on deck for this one. "And tell Markov I want to meet him in my quarters for a debriefing beforehand," he said as he entered the elevator, hitting the button before she'd even had a chance to reply. He knew she hated how much trust he put in Yuli. He also didn't care. As far as Shepard was concerned, Yuli was his second-in-command.

And Shepard needed his second-in-command to be with him on this if it was going to work.


	8. i couldn't say i need more time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crown of leadership weighs heavily no matter who gets forced to wear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all have no idea how much Yuli wants to give Shepard hugs. like he just wants to love on Shepard so bad.

Yuli had to remind himself to breathe as he stood outside Shepard's door, trying to will his heart to stop pounding. He wondered if EDI was monitoring his vitals, reading his mood in the chemicals wreaking havoc with his brain. Wondered if she knew what he was feeling right then, if she could guess the cause of his nervousness. If she was telling Cerberus that Shepard was a pressure point for him in real time.

He hoped not.

Bracing himself, he hit the call button by the door.

"Open it, EDI," Shepard called out from inside; the door opened. No pause, no discussion, no room to think.

Yuli stepped inside. "You wanted to see me?"

"Got a mission coming up in a couple hours," Shepard said. He was further in, sitting on the couch with a small hologram projected from the table and his omni-tool out. If he wasn't talking, Yuli would say he was completely immersed in his work. "I need you to look at the layout of the place with me so we can come up with a plan."

He also looked like he'd barely slept. "A couple of hours isn't a lot of time," Yuli noted.

"Yeah." Shepard sighed, running a hand through the bright red mess that was his hair. "I know."

"Gonna be up for it?"

Shepard let out a quiet huff of a laugh. "Does it matter?"

It mattered to Yuli. But Shepard probably didn't care about that, did he? Besides, what would they do if Shepard couldn't lead the team? It wasn't like Yuli felt qualified to do it himself. "Guess not," he conceded, lowering himself onto the couch next to Shepard to look at the images presented. "Alright, lay it on me."

Utterly relieved, Shepard did so.

Horizon was a small colony that had only just managed to reach some level of self-sustainability. Radiating outward from the original LZ, the initial colony was a spiderweb of prefabs tucked away against a jutting igneous formation with mostly-automated farms dotting the surrounding countryside. Smaller weather stations and outposts were scattered across the planet's surface, but it was doubtful that the collectors would consider them points of interest.

"Given how they had to take enough detours to knock out every QEC buoy in the area, they'll probably be taking the time to discharge their drive core while they're there," Shepard said, "which means they'll probably make landfall. Veetor's scans tell us they did that last time too. With the layout being what it is, my guess is that they'll land right about here-" he pointed to a spot on the holographic map, "which gives them quick access to colony admin and the Alliance's recent GARDIAN setup."

"We're assuming they have a foothold?" Yuli guessed, and Shepard nodded. "So we hit the ship, cut off reinforcements."

"The  _Normandy_ can't do an extended dogfight in-atmo," Shepard said. "She'll overheat. Especially if we're running silent just to get there. Besides, if we hit the ship we might hit the colonists inside."

True. "So what are you suggesting?"

Shepard grinned. "Two teams. Well, three, but one's noncombat and follows along behind. The first team sweeps inward towards the comm beacon, starting from here-" again, Shepard poked at the map, "-and the second moves in with the Hammerhead to cut off the route to the ship and get control of those Alliance defense systems."

"And then we meet in the middle."

"Exactly." Yuli's innards were doing somersaults at just how pleased Shepard looked. "Once we've established control of the area, we use the colony's defenses to target the ship's heat sinks. Make her bleed. She'll light up on sensors like a Christmas tree after that."

In the back of Yuli's head, there was a snarky comment about how he didn't celebrate Christmas. But then, maybe Shepard didn't either. "What about your third team?"

"I want Mordin to come along and help any survivors we might find. We don't know what the full effects of that Collector stasis might be. How it interacts with, well. Anything. Meds, health problems. I figure Mordin would be the kind of person to take that in stride."

Yuli snorted. "He'd take it as a challenge."

"I mean, I wasn't gonna say it..."

"But you were thinking it." Turning his attention back to the map, Yuli leaned forward with his chin resting against his hand as he considered. "Lawson and Taylor with Mordin," he said. "That leaves five, not counting the two of us..."

"Does Grunt fit in the Hammerhead?" Shepard wondered. "You've got more experience with it right now than I do."

Yuli shrugged. "Probably, why?"

"Rather not have him in the residential area, honestly."

"So Grunt goes in the Hammerhead." Yuli turned the hologram with a swish of his fingers, frowning at it. "Are we operating under the assumption that I'll be leading the B team or the A team?"

"Up to you," Shepard said.

"Well, we'll need cover fire, and that's Zaeed and Garrus. If we split them up, then it matters that you work better with Garrus than I do."

"Both teams need a heavy too." At that, Yuli gave him an odd look. "Besides us, I mean."

"We could also assume that both of us work fine as heavies, drop both snipers in the A team to maximize how much ground we can cover in clearing out the residential area, and load up the Hammerhead with Grunt and Jack to go all-in on the back line even faster."

Shepard blinked for a second. "That... Uh."

Another shrug. "You wanted my opinion."

"No, no. I did. And it's not a bad idea, don't get me wrong, just..."

"Unbalanced?"

"Really fucking unbalanced, yeah. I like it, but there's a lot that can go wrong."

Yeah, there was. But Yuli's main concern was how goddamn tired Shepard looked. "It'll work," he said. "I'll take the Hammerhead. You go with the A team." If nothing else, the two snipers could cover Shepard's ass more effectively than any other combo Yuli could think of. They'd keep him safe until Yuli could get there.

Sighing again, Shepard flopped back against the couch. "Right. Okay. Sorry, I'm just-"

"We can do this, Shepard," Yuli told him. "It'll be fine."

"Yeah. I know." Underneath the hand he had over his eyes, Shepard smiled. "Thanks, Yuli."

Yuli would do anything for that smile.

\---

The shuttle could be dropped anywhere, but the Hammerhead was more finicky. Its range meant that the  _Normandy_ had to get close.

So they were still in the docking bay when Yuli heard Joker say over the comm, [Shepard's gone dark. They're jamming us.]

His grip on the controls tightened. "ETA?"

[Two minutes to the LZ.] Behind him, Jack muttered a curse. [We'll need that comm tower up and running to have any kind of contact with you guys while you're down there, so maybe make that a priority?]

"Understood." He couldn't panic. He had to focus. "Stick to the plan. Be ready to land the moment they retreat and have the medbay on standby. We don't know how many casualties we'll find or what kind of condition they'll be in."

[Got it.] And that was it. No banter, no joking around. This was serious now. [Opening up the shuttle bay doors. Good luck out there, man.]

The Hammerhead shot out of the back of the ship like a rocket and hit the LZ at full speed.

It was easy to forget just how large a cruiser was. In front of them, the Collector ship loomed like a mountain in the distance, looking like a termite mound that had grown over an alien skyscraper. Collectors buzzed around it along with their paralysis-inducing swarms, their carapaces shining in the afternoon sun. From this far away, they looked like ordinary bugs.

Except for the fact that ordinary bugs couldn't jack up his ATV's scanners this badly. "We're coming in hot," he warned. "Be ready."

"I was born ready!" Grunt hollered back.

The swarming coalesced. A squad had broken off to head in their direction. Yuli could only assume that some of the ground troops had done the same thing as a cliffside forced him to make a hairpin turn that earned a squawk from Jack. They hadn't anticipated the flyers in their plan; it would be hard to cut off reinforcements completely. He had to think. Fast.

What would Shepard do?

He stopped the Hammerhead abruptly and parked it on a hill just shy of the target, opening the hatch. "Jack, I'll want you manning the Hammerhead's main gun while Grunt and I move on ahead," he said, pulling out his assault rifle and stepping out. "Take out any flyers you see approaching the colony."

Jack balked at that. "Wait, you want me to stay behind?"

"You're the one not wearing any body armor!" he snapped. "Our job is to prevent any more Collectors from stepping in to assist the ones that'll be hitting Shepard and his team. Grunt and I can do that with the ground troops, but none of us have the range to hit the ones in the air if we're on foot. One of us has to stay behind."

"What if they come after me?"

"If they're still loading colonists onto their ship, then they won't bother. We're the bigger threat in that case." If Jack did become a target, then it meant that they were already too late to begin with. "Keep your comms open and be ready to move. We might need the Hammerhead as another way to transport any wounded."

She was bristling, he could tell. Weighing the pros and cons of dissent. Eventually, she let out a frustrated sigh and settled back into the Hammerhead. "Fine. Just get moving, will ya?"

Yuli allowed himself a little pride. He wasn't Shepard, but he could get people to listen to orders too. "Grunt, with me."

"Finally!" Grunt practically bounced as he popped out of the hatch. "About time we got around to the shooting."

  
  



	9. you've got sucker's luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, casualties are inevitable. But sometimes, Shepard can prevent them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a LOT shorter than usual but hey, action! suspense! humor! putting my money where my mouth is and showing Owen being pushed to his limits! 
> 
> i refuse to believe medigel is a perfect instafix for every situation ever. it's a convenient gameplay thing, but as a writer i hate using plot devices that are TOO convenient, yanno

Sometimes missions went sour. It just happened. Shepard wouldn't say that he was used to it necessarily, but he was familiar enough with the feeling that he was more than capable of adapting. The comms were the first thing to go wrong, forcing the two teams to clump together tighter to maintain contact and turning them into a single unwieldy squad moving as a poorly organized unit.

With the backline forced into close quarters alongside the frontline like that, it was inevitable that someone would take a hit. Shepard hadn't expected it to be Jacob, but again: he could manage.

"Take him back to the shuttle," he ordered Miranda. "Mordin, stay with me."

Miranda looked like she wanted to protest even as she hauled Jacob over her shoulder. "That leaves you as the only biotic-"

"I know," Shepard said. "But you're the one with the most medical training besides Mordin, and I still need him with me to help the colonists." They'd found a few. Frozen, unresponsive.

(Except for the eyes. When they'd noticed their movements were being tracked by those eyes, they'd done a second scan; the colonists were fully awake and aware, even paralyzed as they were. Mordin had administered sedatives to a few who had seemed to be panicking.)

Jacob spoke up next. "Shepard's right, Miranda," he said through grit teeth. He wasn't bleeding everywhere - instant cauterization was a consequence of energy weapons like the ones the Collectors used - but the wound in his leg was deep enough that he couldn't put any weight on it. "I'll just slow you guys down."

"Wound needs to be cleaned," Mordin said. "Contamination from destroyed suit likely. Field dressing and medigel inadequate."

A deep frown creased Miranda's genetically engineered features. Eventually, she nodded. "Very well," she said. "Shepard-"

"Keep the comms open," Shepard told her, cutting her off. "I want that shuttle warmed up and ready to pick us up the second we get everything back online."

"Shepard, we've got incoming," Garrus called out from a perch on a nearby balcony. "Wrap it up."

Fuck. "Just go," he said, "and don't worry about me."

Whether she wanted to protect her work or Cerberus investments or Shepard himself, he hadn't given her room to argue and she knew it. She shifted Jacob's weight across her shoulders as she chewed her lip. "Be careful, Shepard."

"I will." Even if careful was slowly proving not to be enough. "You too."

Two down already. Shepard didn't like where this was going.

\---

Back when they'd first fought Sovereign, there had been a lot of close calls. Tali going down with a half-dozen suit punctures to a clump of Thorian creepers. Kaidan taking a stray blob of Rachni acid as he was trying to duck behind a piece of cover on Noveria. Wrex getting hit with a blast from a Geth colossus. There was a particular sort of panic that Shepard felt whenever it happened, like everything had frozen for a split second.

And every time he'd come out of it, he was always moving before he even realized it. Without fail. Usually he'd be halfway towards doing something really stupid, and sometimes he'd even stop himself.

This time it was Kasumi. She'd been overrun by husks, and one of those blasty fuckers was bearing down on her. Zaeed was trying to clear the wave, but sniping them off wasn't cutting it. Her scream as one tore through her suit turned Shepard's blood cold the second it hit his ears; he turned from the Collector he was shotgunning. Saw what was happening. Watched her go down.

The world slowed. Narrowed. He wasn't aware of his biotics roaring to life, just the prickling of it along his skin. He wasn't thinking about what Yuli had said about blowing barriers, or trying to calculate impact forces. Only one thought was going through his head:  _no_ .

No. They couldn't have her.

He wouldn't let them.

One second, he was twenty meters away. The next, he was shoulder-checking a clump of husks accompanied by the sickening sound of bones being mulched. Distantly, he heard Kasumi gasp, but he was too busy picking up the remaining husks with his biotics and throwing them into each other. Into the walls of prefabs, into cargo containers. At one point he heard the wind-up on the blasty one's plasma attack and threw a truck at it.

He could feel his heart hammering away in his chest by the time he was finished, breathing like he'd run a marathon. Eventually, he glanced down at Kasumi. Held out a hand.

"You okay?" he asked.

She blinked up at him and took his hand, hauling herself up. "I've been worse," she said. She was right; the only damage was a shallow gash in her side. Relief washed over him. "I feel like I should be flattered. D'you treat all the girls like that, or is it just me?"

"Oh, he's like that with everyone," Garrus told her, climbing down from his latest perch. "Need some medigel?"

Shepard sighed, sagging as he stepped back to let Garrus handle it. "Zaeed, watch the perimeter," he ordered. "Mordin, scan that big one and save the results to bring back to the ship for study. I wanna know what it's made of and who else the Collectors might be hitting to get the parts."

"Affirmative." God bless Mordin for being on the ball. "Permission to tag the location for retrieval? For a full autopsy, of course."

Miranda would probably hate that, wouldn't she? Autopsies being done on her pretty, spotless ship by an alien instead of in a Cerberus lab by a paid goon. "Granted," Shepard said, leaning heavily against a wall.

He could only hope Yuli's squad was doing better than his.


	10. does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has to come crashing down eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
> 
> this is where the Canon-Typical Violence tag reeeeaaally comes in. consider yourselves warned.

Yuli was doing just fine, actually.

Small squads had their perks. And with Grunt being a heavy like he was, there was no back line to worry about. Both of them were free to charge headlong into the enemy, tearing through the bugs and their husks like wet tissue paper. Occasionally things would get switched up and one of the bastards would start glowing and saying weird shit like "we are the Harbinger" but Grunt was quick to charge and shotgun those after Yuli ripped open their barriers.

In any other situation, they probably would've been the least ideal duo imaginable. But the enemy had no snipers, no engineers. It was all biotics and exoskeletal armor plating, which were countered by biotics and incendiary ammo, and even their heavies couldn't punch through Yuli's barriers or Grunt's armor. The gamble of an unbalanced team was paying off.

Until they came up to a prefab door that needed to be hacked. Oops.

"Uh," Yuli said, looking at the angry red interface. "I don't think it likes me."

"We could just smash through it," Grunt suggested.

"Yeah, but people still have to actually live here when we're done." Eden Prime had been a mess after the Alliance had finished with it. Yeah, some of it was the fault of the Geth, but a lot of it wasn't. Geth plasma weapons left very different scorch marks from standard issue Alliance arms. "Lemme just..."

Another attempt only got the same angry, beeping result as the first time. He could imagine the long string of failed access attempt messages that were probably being sent to the omni-tool of whoever lived there. If he had any idea of how to hotwire things - or if he'd bothered to actually download any of those hacking programs Kasumi had come up with - then this wouldn't be a problem. But this was never something he'd thought about having to learn. Someone on his squad would handle it, or Shepard would.

He was about two seconds away from giving in to Grunt's suggestion when all of a sudden, the interface went from red to green with another shrill beep. Then the door slid open and revealed an assault rifle being pointed directly at the center of his chest.

An assault rifle being held by a woman with long brown hair, full body armor, and murder in her eyes. "Hands where I can see them," she ordered.

Yuli's hands shot up. He craned his neck to glare back at Grunt and the Krogran grudgingly mirrored the action. "We're not your enemy."

"Really? So you just happened to pick a set of armor with a Cerberus logo on it because you thought it looked pretty?" Her gaze flicked between him and Grunt, calculating. "State your name and intent."

"Yuli Markov," he said. "My companion's name is Grunt. We're here investigating colony disappearances."

"Grunt, huh?" She turned her attention to the Krogan. "Hey, you. D'you talk?"

Grunt snorted. "I can do more than talk." Coming from anyone else, it'd sound like flirting. From Grunt, the implication was more along the lines of ripping someone's spine out and beating them to death with it. "This is a waste of time."

That seemed to ease some of the tension in the woman's posture. "Not one of Saren's then," she said. "What's a Cerberus goon doing hanging around with a Krogan?"

Yuli bristled. "Look, whatever you're thinking? Whatever beef it is you have with Cerberus? Stow it. We've got a mission to complete and we need to get through here to do it. Are you gonna let us by or not?"

"For all I know, you're the ones who sent the Collectors here in the first place."

"Look around you!" Yuli shot back, gesturing back to the remains of the last firefight. "Fucking husks! Do you really think Cerberus would be behind that?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely," she snapped, unwavering. "Wouldn't even be the first time."

Yuli stared at her from behind his helmet. That- that couldn't be right, could it? He knew Cerberus was bad, but- "What do you mean?"

A grim smile curved her lips. "You dumb son of a bitch. Is that how they keep their people in line? By not telling them anything? Figures." The assault rifle was finally lifted, propped against her shoulder as she held out her hand for a handshake. "Operations Chief Ashley Williams, Alliance navy."

He hesitated for a second before taking the offered hand. "Enlisted, huh?"

"Hah! Yeah. They so don't pay me enough for this." Her hand fell to her hip. "So you boys are here to play exterminator, huh?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "And as much as I'd love to stay and chat, we really need to get back to our mission-"

[Markov, status!]

Yuli froze. His heart leapt; he couldn't open comms fast enough. "Still in one piece, Shepard." Was his voice steady enough to sound calm? Shit, he'd been worried.

Why had Williams gone so pale all of a sudden? [We got the comms up and running, but EDI's gonna have to manually target the guns. Errors in the software. Nothing she can't handle, but it'll take time.]

"What's your position?"

[Parked it right at the comm tower. We're gonna try and hold for as long as we can.]

Yuli pulled up a map of the area on his omni-tool, ignoring how much his hands shook. "Understood. Gimme five minutes."

[Copy that.] A pause. [I'm glad you're okay.]

Oh, how tempting it was to take that bait. "Chatter, Shepard," Yuli admonished. "Just focus on staying alive until we get there, alright?"

[Yeah. You be careful too.]

"Always am." He cut the feed off after that, glancing at Williams. "Gonna let us by?"

Williams blinked a bit before giving him a sharp look. "Fuck that, I'm coming with you."

Uh. "You sure?"

"Kid, I stared down a Reaper. D'you really think a few bugs are gonna scare me?" She slapped a thermal clip into her rifle. Wait, had it not been loaded? "Let's go."

Behind him, Grunt huffed and grumbled something about humans talking too much.

\---

When they got to the comm tower, Shepard was smack in the middle of a firefight. Husks, those giant mutant husks that had the biotics, Collectors- it was a small army by the looks of things, all bearing down on the commander and his squad.

Yuli didn't need to see more than that. Whipping out his biotic lashes, he vaulted the last fence that was between him and the fight and charged forward in a streak of crackling blue. A pull tore at the barriers of one Collector; another got lassoed and flung into a clump of husks. The only fear he felt was the terrible sickening kind that came with people he cared about being in danger, his focus narrowing to the fight itself.

"Nice timing, Markov!" Garrus hollered, admittedly hard to hear over the sound of Grunt roaring and throwing himself into a couple of Collectors that were scrambling to retreat to cover. A high-caliber shot whizzing past Yuli's helmet to land in a husk's head was Zaeed's contribution; he didn't pay attention to either. Didn't allow himself to. He had to trust that they could do their jobs around him so he could focus on doing his.

Shepard was still surrounded. Hunkered down by a console, biotics flickering. Dumbass had a nosebleed again as he stood over Kasumi, who was in the process of reloading.

Without a second's pause, Yuli warped the collector Shepard was holding. The resulting  _crack_ of exploding biotics was loud enough to make Yuli's ears ring even through his helmet. Finally, Shepard looked up and spotted him. Realized he was there. The sheer relief written into the way Shepard sagged made Yuli's chest tighten even as Kasumi's approving whistle threatened to kill the mood.

Then he caught sight of Williams climbing over the same fence Yuli had and that relief turned to shock. "Ash?"

"I knew it!" she crowed. Laughing as she jogged over. "I fucking knew it was you!"

"How?" Shepard seemed as dumbfounded as he was glad to see her. "I mean, the intel they gave me said you were stationed here, but the Collectors-"

She grinned and whipped out her omni-tool, the minifacturing producing a single-edged blade about a foot long in the time that it took to blink. "Omni-blade." As quickly as it had been pulled out, she stowed it. "You blew another amp, I see. Guess some things don't change."

"He was supposed to have other biotics with him to help share the load," Yuli noted.

"Oh, was he now?" Williams pitched her voice a little higher, putting on a haughty air. "Care to tell us where those other biotics might be?"

Shepard cringed visibly, taking a self-conscious moment to wipe at his nose with the back of his gauntlet. "Back at the shuttle. Jacob took a hit, Miranda's helping him. A few of the colonists were just starting to come out of stasis as we got to them too, so Mordin stayed behind to help them out."

"Is Mordin another biotic?" she asked.

"No, he's a doctor. And a tech specialist." And a Salarian, Yuli thought. But if Shepard wasn't mentioning it, then neither would he. "Speaking of which, where's Jack?"

"Back with the Hammerhead," Yuli said. "We needed anti-air fire to cover our entrance. Seemed like the best option."

Shepard's smile was absolutely blinding. "Good call. And nice job getting here in one piece with just Grunt to back you up."

Yuli was so glad he was still wearing his helmet right about then, letting out an awkward laugh and averting his eyes. What could he say to that? A couple of weeks ago he would've insisted he didn't do it for Shepard's approval, but now he was just as weak to it as everyone else. Shit, now he was taking too long. There was that little furrow in Shepard's brow, that tilt to the head. Open confusion and concern; he couldn't be easier to read if he tried. Yuli wondered if he was that obvious.

Eventually, Zaeed's voice cut through the sudden tension. "Incoming!" he barked. "Looks like it's just the one. Goddamn bugs don't know when to quit, do they?"

The smile fell away from Shepard's face. "EDI, status on the guns."

[Eighty percent,] the AI said as all eyes turned to the sky. [I need more time, Shepard.]

"What the hell is that?" came the echo of everyone's thoughts from a squinting Kasumi.

Yuli didn't know. He hadn't seen anything like that on the way over. It looked like a bug, with too many legs and even more eyes, a shining black carapace, and a weird, gaping maw. He couldn't tell if it was organic or mechanical as it floated down towards them like it was being carried by a gentle breeze.

A shot rang out, but it only sent a ripple through the thing's barriers. "It's got shields," Garrus called out. "Shepard, what's the plan?"

But for the first time since Yuli had met him, Shepard hesitated.

"Uh," he said. Shaking his head quickly as if to clear it. The nosebleed, Yuli realized; he'd wiped it away, but it was still going.

There wasn't time to worry. Someone had to take charge. "Armor piercing rounds," Yuli ordered, whipping out his lashes again. His biotics flared into life with renewed vigor. "Zaeed, Garrus, be ready to unload the moment I blow its barriers. The eyes are glowing, so they're probably connected to some kind of internal power source. Kasumi, have an overload ready."

He was already in motion with a charge when it landed. The world rushed past him and came to a halt in a burst of raw dark energy that had the thing recoiling from him with an angry shriek. Up close, he could see that its mouth was actually full of husks and not oddly shaped dark teeth.

"Grunt, flank it!" he shouted. It swung at him with one of its knifelike legs, giving him the opportunity to turn a dodge into a feint; he lassoed the leg that had swung at him with one lash, then the opposite one with the other as he dug his heels in and held it firmly in place.

He had no way to know he'd given it a perfectly clear shot at him.

Even if he'd been in a position to dodge, there was no dodging a particle beam. There wasn't even any warning; the sound of it firing hit his ears at the same time that searing pain tore through his face and his helmet's HUD winked out, ripping an involuntary howl from his throat as it kept right on going and veered straight through the armor and flesh of one arm before powering down. On instinct, he recoiled. Let go of the thing for just an instant.

It reared back. Garrus's shot went wide. This time, the sickly-wet sound of its leg piercing right through flesh and bone and ceramic composite hit him before the pain did. He coughed, choked on his own blood. Above him, the thing clicked and chittered as it bore down to pin him firmly to the ground.

He couldn't really say what happened after that.


	11. no longer the lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard is falling hard. So hard that it scares him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy feelings
> 
> we're all stuck in this quarantine together so we might as well pass the time with some fic, right
> 
> i'm starting to realize that shepard's chapters are a lot shorter than yuli's but i can't figure out WHY. it's so fuckin weird.

Shepard didn't hear himself shout. He only registered that he was moving as his fist was connecting with the thing's carapace, smashing through it with bone-shattering force. If it weren't for the cybernetics and meshes and weaves, his knuckles would've been powderized by the impact; he felt it rattle up his arm, jarring him back to reality.

He snarled then. Gripped the shattered edge with one hand, held on as he swung his shotgun around with the other. Braced himself with one boot against its side. When he blasted its exposed insides, it shrieked. Flailed. He could distantly hear that he wasn't the only one shooting through the blood rushing in his ears. It only took one more point-blank shot to topple the thing.

But Yuli.  _Yuli_ . Shepard heard him choke as the bladelike leg stuck through his chest was wrenched out and the adrenaline was gone as quickly as it'd rushed in. Head back to pounding, swimming with sudden dizziness. Grip loosening, Shepard let the shotgun fall to the bloodied ground and stumbled to Yuli's side.

He had to think. Had to do something.

"Shit, shit..." Ash spat, rushing over. "Anybody got some medigel? Somebody help me get his helmet off-"

Within moments she was there, doing what she could. The others were coming over too. Kasumi and Garrus were on the comms, getting Miranda to bring in the shuttle, having EDI fire the guns to get the Collector ship out of the way. Not a minute later and it was gone, allowing Joker to swing the ship back around to the colony.

And all Shepard could do was stand there. Shaking and numb. Yuli was dying and it was his fault. A good man was bleeding out on the yellow grass of some backwater colony because Shepard had leaned on him too hard.

Shepard couldn't say how much time he spent standing there. The shuttle was already lifting off by the time a hand on his shoulder startled him out of his own head. When had it landed? He hadn't even noticed.

Oh. Ash was talking to him. "Hey," she said, "you okay?"

He turned to look at her. A trickle of wetness over his lip got him to wipe absently at his nose with a quiet sniffle; his hand came away bloody. Right, he'd overdone it. Was he okay? A sharp throb through the back of his neck that shot straight into his skull told him he probably wasn't. "I'll be fine," he mumbled.

"Wasn't what I was asking, skipper." She sighed and gave his shoulder a solid pat. There was obviously a lot going through her head that she wasn't saying, but Shepard didn't have the words right then to confront her about it. Eventually, her hand fell back to her side. "God, what a fucking day, right?"

He smiled a little. "Yeah."

"I hope you realize I'm gonna want a full story on all this."

"Not surprising."

She snorted. "Seriously, Shepard. I mean come on, Cerberus?  _Really_ ?"

"Oh, I'm fully aware of how abusive the relationship is. First chance I get, I'm taking the kids and leaving."

"Ha!" There. He got her to laugh. That had to mean something. "Well, I gotta report back to the Citadel anyway. Think there's room on your shiny Cerberus boat for me to hitch a ride?"

In that state, there was no way he could possibly make himself say no.

\---

Down in the mess, with Garrus and Joker to either side of him, he told Ash everything. It was a good distraction, something to keep his eyes from wandering over to the door of the medbay. Something to keep him from thinking too much. But it could only last so long, and once he was out of things to say and everyone had left, thinking too much was all he could do.

Critical condition. Several shattered ribs, a punctured lung. Severe burns, deep tissue and nerve damage. The clinical description of Yuli's injuries didn't do the horror of it justice; they'd been picking shards of his armor out of his lower respiratory system, peeling melted plastic away from his cheekbone and a ruined ear. His hair had even been burnt clean through on one side, and probably would've needed to be cut even if they hadn't shaved that side of his head to be able to fix his face.

Even if he was going to be okay, he'd be scarred. Marked forever by Shepard's failure to act in time. Like Garrus had been, except Garrus hadn't had Shepard asking him to be there, goading him on the whole time by being in need of favor after favor. Yuli was good and kind and smart and beautiful and Shepard had almost killed him. Could still kill him, if this kept on going like it had been.

Shepard didn't know if he could take that. But then, what could he do? Was there any saving this? Could he really stop Yuli from following him into Hell itself at this point, now that he'd already earned that loyalty and trust?

Did he even want Yuli to stop?

No, he realized. He didn't want that. He wanted to hold on tighter. Keep Yuli closer, so he could watch and listen and protect what was his. Because in his head, that's what Yuli was-  _his_ . Something that belonged to him, more than his ship and his friends and his family and his crew. His second-in-command, his right hand man. 

It was a dangerous thought, Shepard knew. But it was also familiar, a thing he'd wrestled with all his life. He didn't know how to care any other way. Taking responsibility was what he'd been raised to do; if everything he cared about belonged to him on some level, then it forced him to step up when it was threatened. Selfishness kept him from being a bystander. And if he distanced himself from Yuli, he wouldn't be there to help when something else inevitably happened. He couldn't handle that thought either.

What he wanted, though - what he really, truly wanted - was something he could never allow himself to have. He'd let it happen with Jeff when he shouldn't have, because he'd thought he might have found someone who could finally handle that part of him. But when it was all torn away, he'd dug in so deeply that he'd ripped a piece of his pilot away with him. And Jeff hadn't deserved that.

Yuli didn't either. Which left Shepard at a loss. If he distanced himself, he couldn't protect what he cared about. If he stayed close, he'd be putting Yuli in danger and tempting himself. There was no right answer. No clear path.

[Message coming in, commander,] Joker said over the intercom. Probably back in the cockpit. How long had Shepard been sitting in the same spot since everyone else had left? [It's from Admiral Hackett. Says it's urgent.]

Shepard sighed and pushed himself up from his seat. "I'll take it in my quarters," he said.

Whatever. It didn't matter, couldn't matter. Like he so often did, Shepard still had work to do.


	12. truth is like blood underneath your fingernails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuli was bound to learn the truth eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from a short one to an EXTRA-LONG ONE. i'm tellin ya, yuli's chapters are monstrous compared to owen's
> 
> this is your daily reminder that Cerberus had been bad since before game 2 and if you did all the side missions in the first game you'd know they got up to some Really Dark Shit
> 
> it will not be your only reminder

The first thing Yuli became aware of was how much everything ached. The second was that his throat was terribly dry. And the third was that he wasn't alone in the piercing, sterile white of the medbay.

"Shepard," he mumbled. Hoarse, quiet, muffled by an oxygen mask. A twinge shot through the right half of his face and made him wince.

Shepard noticed. Like he always did. He was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands right up to the point where Yuli spoke, but the sound immediately caught his attention. In an instant he was sitting up, leaning forward with hope and worry written into the lines around his bright green eyes.

Yuli was too caught up in the details to hear what he said right away. Too distracted by the bandages across Shepard's knuckles, the exhaustion bleeding into his features.

"-that you shouldn't try to move too much," he was saying. "No missions for a week, at least. Cerberus tech is good, but all those meshes and grafts still need time to heal."

Yuli nodded slowly. He could understand that, but- "Your hand," he rasped.

A furrow appeared in Shepard's brow. "Hey, no. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"Shepard-"

"Medigel fixed it right up. It's not a big deal. Microfractures, y'know?" Fucking vanguard. Yuli let out a sigh as he made himself relax; injuries from ill-advised biotic charges weren't exactly something he could criticize when Shepard was literally built for it. "I'm okay. More worried about you anyway."

Right. "Have you slept?"

Shepard's expression crumpled. "That obvious, huh."

Another nod. Slowly, Yuli lifted his arm and let the back of his hand touch Shepard's face; the commander leaned into it just a bit and let out a breath through his nose.

"Ash is being assigned to the  _Normandy_ ," he continued. "The Alliance wants to keep track of the mission, make sure we don't do anything that'll cause an incident. It's not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it's nice to have her back on the team."

"The Collectors?"

"Bleeding and on the run. Not gonna lie, the Illusive Man is acting real cagey about how everything went down. But we did stop them before they could take the whole colony." Shepard ducked his head, but brought his hand up to catch Yuli's so the contact wasn't lost. He was so  _warm_ . "Fuck, we actually did it. We stopped them. This is doable."

"Always was," Yuli told him. Their fingers wound together, long and tapered tangled up with thick and strong. Was this actually happening, or was Yuli high on painkillers? He did feel a little floaty.

It was quiet for several seconds before Shepard spoke again. "There is one more thing," he said. "I've been given another mission. It's from Admiral Hackett. Just me, he says."

"No." As firmly as Yuli could manage.

"I asked if it could wait, but he said it couldn't. It's an urgent rescue mission out in Batarian space." Batarian space. The  _Normandy_ was a human ship with no political clout behind her to act as protection; she'd be shot down on sight. "I'll be heading out the minute we hit the Citadel. Shouldn't take more than a week."

"Tell him to send his own people and fuck off."

"Look, I won't be alone. There's another operative coming with me. But since we're going on a hijacked Batarian ship, any more than that will be suspicious. And he knows I've got experience in this kind of thing from back during the Blitz."

"Shepard." Yuli didn't like pleading. He wasn't good at it. " _Owen_ . Tell him no."

Shepard looked up sharply, blinking like a startled cat. For several seconds his mouth hung open without actually making any words. Then his face screwed up in a grimace as he pulled his hand away from Yuli's and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said.

Yuli let his hand fall back to the bed. Shepard was going to kill himself at this rate. "Promise me you'll come back." Fuck it, cards on the table: he cared. And if it took reminding Shepard of that to get him to take care of himself, then so be it.

God, Shepard couldn't even do that much, could he? With that heartbreaking guilty look, eyes trained on the bedsheets. Son of a bitch knew this was a bad idea.

Bringing a hand up to take off the breathing mask, Yuli turned just enough to look at Shepard directly. "Owen," he pressed, "tell me you'll come back from this."

Shepard sagged. "Okay," he sighed, "okay. I'll come back."

"Whatever it takes."

"Yeah, alright. Whatever it takes."

Good, because Yuli was getting lightheaded. Having said what he needed to say, he slid the mask back on and flopped back against the pillows. It'd have to be enough.

He was out cold again not long after that.

\---

Over the next couple of days, Yuli was in and out of consciousness as he recovered and both Mordin and Chakwas came in regularly to poke and prod and check vitals. Somewhere in there he knew they'd docked at the Citadel and that Shepard had left on his mission, but he tried not to dwell on it. The ship wasn't going anywhere regardless; Shepard had ordered another round of refits to be handled while he was gone, and the tweaks to the hull plating in particular would take a while.

So really, no one was in command and everyone was free to do as they liked so long as they came back to the ship on time. And Yuli was one of the few people who had... Well, nothing. No plans, not much in the way of hobbies unless binge-watching terrible holonovelas counted. Lately he'd just wrapped so much of himself up in either his work or other people that he didn't really know what to do with himself.

This meant that by day three, he was about ready to eat his own hair.

"That's it," he said during one poking session with Mordin. Sitting up, plucking one of those itchy hospital gowns off of a nearby table, tying it around his waist instead of bothering to put it on like a normal human being. "I can breathe, I can move. I'm leaving."

Mordin frowned and blinked his big dark eyes like he was thinking about fighting it, but eventually decided against it. Instead he settled on a disdainful little  _hm_ and some nagging. "Make sure to take ten milligrams of-"

"Yep."

"If muscle cramping persists for longer than fifteen minutes, be sure to-"

"Come  _on_ , Mordin. I'll be fine." Great, now Mordin was folding his arms and looking disappointed. If the Salarian doctor wore glasses, he'd be looking over the top of them. "If it gets bad, I'll just take it easy. I'm not about to go on any missions or anything."

"Good." That seemed to satisfy him. "Come back if you need further assistance."

Right. First stop, crew quarters to get clothes. Second stop? He didn't quite know yet. He would probably figure it out as he went along. See where his feet took him. Hopefully not to Shepard's door, because that would just be awkward and kind of sad. He liked to think he was above that kind of pining. Of course he also liked to think that putting on a shirt was an easy thing to do, but every single muscle in his right side from the waist up had other ideas, so people were just going to have to deal with him wearing a sleeveless Blasto top around the ship for now.

This was how he ended up in the shuttle bay with his hair down, a Blasto tank top, loose pajama pants, and no shoes. Bending was hard, moving his whole-ass right arm farther than a forty-five degree angle from his torso was hard, and he was bored enough to think of something like making playlists that he could put on when he was driving the Hammerhead.

He had no idea what kind of impression such a look must've given Chief Williams he got down there and saw that she'd gotten there first.

"Oh, hey," she greeted with a quick glance back. She'd put together a gun bench using two crates and a piece of sheet metal and was picking apart a Collector assault rifle. "You're up. Markov, right?"

He blinked. "Uh, yes ma'am."

"C'mon kid, don't  _ma'am_ at me. I've seen your biotics, there's no way you were enlisted." She shot him a grin. "Guys like you get fast-tracked."

"Did Shepard get fast-tracked?"

"Sure did. Even if he wasn't a biotic, his parents are both career military. Dad's an admiral, mom's a captain. Any kid would grow up neurotic being raised by that." For some reason, this made her snort and shake her head. "So why's a sweet kid like you with Cerberus?"

Yuli flinched. "It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time, I guess."

"Uh-huh." She put the gun bits down and turned around to lean back against her makeshift bench, palms flat against the sheet metal. It was a comfortable pose, nothing like the sultry shapes Lawson bent herself into or the aggressive power-stances that Jack tended to take. Williams didn't need any of that. She was a soldier. "And why would it be the right thing to do?"

"With respect, ma'am-"

"Told you to cut the  _ma'am_ crap, Markov."

"Sorry." Then what else was appropriate? "With respect, chief? I don't know you. And this ship is so bugged that even if you clear out one room, EDI can probably still detect what you're saying through the vibrations of the floorboards in the next one."

Her nose crinkled. "The AI?"

"It's not her fault," Yuli said quickly, "but that's not the point. The point is, I don't actually trust these people to not listen in on everything we have to say."

"Hah! So you don't trust them." She clapped her hands together. "Cool. That means I can tell you stuff and you won't just freak out and deny it."

He frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

"It's a groupthink kinda thing, kid." Right, because that made sense. "Anyway. So, two years ago, right? Me and Shepard and Joker and Garrus and a bunch of others, we went and fought Saren. But while we're at it, we're doing other shit too. Saving kittens from trees, rescuing colonies from being totalled by asteroids, catching space pirates. That kinda thing."

"What's this have to do with-"

"Getting to it. Hush." She fixed him with a pointed look, only letting up when she seemed sure he wouldn't interrupt further. "So we get to this one planet, I forget which. Ontarom? We got a tip while we were on Noveria that somebody was making off with scientists, all of them connected to this one project back on Akuze."

"Sounds familiar."

"Freak thresher maw attack," she told him. "Anyway, we're hunting down this last scientist known to have gone missing and what do we find? Cerberus! And y'know what they were doing?"

"I'm not sure I want to."

"Human experimentation!" Williams crowed. "Turns out the scientists were disappearing because they'd all been working for Cerberus-funded Alliance brass on a nasty project that involved shit like injecting thresher maw blood into people. A survivor of the project was out for blood and killing them off. Said survivor was a product of that same freak thresher maw attack on Akuze, which they orchestrated."

The blood drained from Yuli's face. What... "That can't be right."

"Oh, it gets better. See, that was just one of the leads we chased down that ended up leading to Cerberus. The same tech they used to attact a thresher maw on Akuze? They used it on another squad somewhere else, luring them in with a false distress beacon before turning on the lure. And that squad belonged to one Admiral Kahoku, God rest his soul."

"I know that name..."

"You should! Admiral Kahoku got his face eaten off by Thorian creepers that Cerberus was keeping as neat pets." She paused, thinking. "Kept Rachni drones too, actually. Oh, and we couldn't totally line it up with them, but we're pretty sure they were involved with turning all the people at a small research outpost into husks. We found their communications on-site."

Husks. Cerberus had been involved with making people into husks? "That's why you thought they might've been responsible for Horizon," he said, feeling numb. Outside of himself. He'd been working for that? Willingly?

"Shepard thinks so too, by the way," she added. "That Harbinger voice recognized him. Said his name. Garrus confirmed it. And apparently the Illusive Man was the one to put out the tip saying that the commander might be working for Cerberus, and that Cerberus was investigating the colony disappearances. He wanted to know if the Collectors were interested in Shepard, so he tempted the Alliance into sending someone from the original crew to investigate."

"You," Yuli breathed. "You were bait."

"Seems like it." Her lazy smile turned into a grim smirk. "And then there's Joker."

Did Yuli even want to know? "What about him?"

"Well, Joker and Shepard were dating," she said. "Says a lot about Cerberus as an organization that he's the one they got to fly the ship when they definitely knew enough to know Shepard would be on the fence, doesn't it?"

_Everyone loves Shepard_ , Joker had said. He hadn't laid any claim. And Williams was speaking in the past tense. "Then it must've backfired." Joker had been too smart. He must have known he was being used. "Joker didn't want to be bait, I guess."

"That's pretty much what he said, yeah. They paid for some health stuff for him and that's about it." Her smile went back to something resembling normal, softening. "Right now he's just sponging off of them until they get annoyed enough to cut him off. I mean it's one way to fight the system, right?"

Fuck. This was a lot to process. He'd known Cerberus was bad, but- "And you still wanted to be here? Knowing all that?"

She chuckled. "It's Shepard. Still the same dumbass he always was. I figure somebody's gotta keep his ass safe."

Joker had been right. Everyone really did love Shepard.

It went quiet after that for several seconds. Williams tapped her fingers lightly against her not-workbench and knocked the back of her heel against the deck. "Anyway, I should get back to work. Guns don't service themselves."

Yeah, speaking of that... "You know we have an armory, right?"

"Oh, I know. But there's this Cerberus goon up there who keeps trying to be all buddy-buddy and convert me to the cause." Jacob. Right. Admittedly, the attempts at conversion probably weren't so much zealotry as they were just being apologetic towards Cerberus, but Yuli couldn't see Williams appreciating the latter any more than she would the former. "Besides, I like it down here. Hum of the engines and all that."

"I'll take your word for it." Yuli was no spacer. "Thanks for, well. All that."

She shrugged. "Anytime, kid." Turning back to her bench, she picked up the piece of a rifle she'd been working on along with a flathead screwdriver. "Lemme know if you need anything else."

As he headed back to the elevator, he had to wonder whether being bored might actually be better than the alternative.


	13. see the sky, it's looking brighter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making friends, all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did not expect these two to get along as well as they do. i honestly expected more fighting. 
> 
> yes, i have both virmire survivors. no, i didn't mention it until this point because it wouldn't seem noteworthy in-canon that both survive. it's only noteworthy from an outsider perspective because we know that wasn't the thing that was intended to happen. yes, i planned this from the beginning. fuck the rules yo
> 
> i'm expanding on the messages you ICly get ingame from people who ask about the hot dudes following Shepard around because i think they're hilarious. there's at least three to my knowledge and i'm pretty sure that if Garrus, Thane, and Grunt all got asked after in some capacity then Kaidan probably did too. (several breeding requests for Grunt and one for Shepard. kills me every time, i can't even. i salute your strange human fetish, random krogan)

Shepard was expecting a grunt to meet him at the docks. Some nobody who had a squeaky-clean record and a perfect uniform, hot off the presses and more than happy to have a mission that involved watching Shepard like a hawk just because it meant less work for them. Needless to say, he didn't get what he was expecting.

"Kaidan?" he breathed. The other biotic turned to look at him; Shepard laughed and rushed forward, and then Kaidan was being pulled into a fierce hug before he could even get a word in edgewise.

"Uh..." Kaidan cleared his throat and gave Shepard a pat. "Hey, Owen."

Better than nothing. He'd take it. "Hey yourself!" Shepard drew back, still grinning. Then he straightened and offered a salute. "Ahem.  _Commander_ ." 

Kaidan finally smiled, giving a respectful nod in turn. "Commander," he acknowledged. "Quite a ship you have here."

"Ah, she's got nothing on the original. I'm still trying to bring her up to specs." There was a lot of work left to be done before they'd be ready to fight the Collectors. Luckily, Shepard wasn't one to rush into that kind of thing. He gestured to the elevator. "Go ahead, lead the way. I'm right with you."

Kaidan nodded, and both started in that direction. "So," he began. "Cerberus."

"Means to an end. You know me, Kaidan." Better than most did. "Not gonna lie though, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Some control chip or self-destruct or trigger word."

"Right." Some of the tension left Kaidan's shoulders. "At least you're not blinded by, y'know. All this." He motioned towards the ship in the last moments it was visible before the elevator door closed; Shepard nodded grimly as they both leaned against opposite walls. Customary positions would be next to each other, usually, but nothing about this was customary.

God, Shepard had missed him. Missed all of them. "Not for lack of trying on their part."

"Oh?"

"They brought in Joker," Shepard told him. Kaidan muttered a curse. "Chakwas too. Pointed me towards Garrus. They want me to think it's just like old times."

"But it's not, is it?" Of course it wasn't. "I read Ash's report. Scary stuff. Up until this point we didn't think the Collectors were anything more than a Terminus boogeyman."

"Oh, they're real. And they've got husks, too. Plus a few new tricks we hadn't seen before."

"Yeah. Scans were done of a few bodies on Horizon." Kaidan folded his arms. "Intel's dubbed them 'scions' for now. And that big one, they're calling it a 'praetorian'."

"Want me to send over data from my ship? Mordin managed to get a couple of autopsies done, did some scans himself."

He blinked, then managed a smile. "Yeah. I think the boys back at Arcturus would appreciate that."

"Then I'll see to it that it gets done." Simple as that. Shepard knew there was a lot of rebuilding to do between them if he was going to have his friend back; Kaidan was slow to trust to begin with. But just having the chance to try and rebuild that trust was more than enough. "I have some data on actions Cerberus has taken in the past too. Mostly just things they've declassified and given to me, but I can probably hand over what I've got once this is over."

"Just like that?"

Shepard nodded. "Just like that, Kaidan. When all this is done, I want to see this operation blown wide open. The people at the top are monsters and the people at the bottom have no idea what they're enabling. It has to stop."

"You'll get no argument from me. I'm just surprised." Kaidan smirked, shifting his weight. "Usually you're more loyal than this."

"Well, usually I'm not expected to use a fanatic as my second-in-command," Shepard replied. He had respect for Miranda, but he could throw her a lot farther than he'd ever trust her. "'I believe in what Cerberus stands for, Shepard.' God, what a tool."

"Y'know, I don't think I've ever seen you this worked up over something that wasn't the Council."

Kaidan didn't know the half of it. "Get used to it, 'cause you're gonna hear a lot of pent-up rants on this mission," Shepard said; Kaidan chuckled. "Where are we going, anyway?"

The elevator dinged. "Aratoht," Kaidan told him. "Lemme get my gear and I'll get you up to speed on the way."

\---

Aratoht. Bahak system, Viper nebula. A miserable planet whose only plus side was its mineral-rich crust. The Alliance had given up on it after the cost of terraforming had been deemed too high, and the Hegemony had stepped right in afterward. It had a population of about three hundred thousand, according to estimates that included the not insubstantial number of slaves living there under Batarian rule.

It was also where an Alliance scientist was being held. Amanda Kenson, a friend of Admiral Hackett, had been captured by the Batarians while on a supply run. Her reason for being in Hegemony space? A Reaper artifact.

"Huh," went Shepard. "Why's it always Batarian space? First the Leviathan of Dis, now this."

"We still don't know that the Leviathan of Dis was a Reaper, Owen," Kaidan reminded him.

Yeah, well. Even if it might be confirmation bias, there wasn't anything else in any archaeological record Shepard had been able to find that remotely resembled the giant alien machine that had been described at the time. "Eh, whatever." Shepard leaned back in his seat with a sigh. "Keep going, I'm listening."

"The Alliance can't offer support for the fight against the Reapers openly, but that doesn't mean we're not following whatever leads we can find." Kaidan opened up his omni-tool, pulling up what looked like a mission report. "So when our spies found this thing, we sent in a science team to research it. Doctor Kenson is the head of that team."

"So not only is the research valuable, but she's probably got her fingers in enough black ops pies for the whole getting captured thing to spook the people in charge of intel," Shepard guessed.

Kaidan nodded. "The  _Normandy_ is too obvious for Batarian space. Unless Cerberus has changed her design a lot more than we think they did, she can't handle stealth for more than a few hours, especially not if she has to land. And any human-designed shuttle without the right IFF systems would be tagged instantly the moment it got close."

"Hence this thing." Shepard patted the inner hull of the shuttle; the sound it made did little to bolster his confidence. "Is it even gonna be able to handle in-atmo maneuvers?"

"It can handle it. Our people cleared it for whatever we need it to do."

"Voice mod for the Batarian subvocals?"

Kaidan huffed a laugh. "It's as ready as it needs to be, Shepard."

"Right. Sorry. I'm just-"

"Nervous?"

"Yeah." Shepard let his head hit the chair's headrest; the entire thing creaked. This chair had not been made for over a hundred kilos of person wearing twenty kilos of gear. Every slightest shift had it complaining loudly underneath him. "Last mission I was on went bad. One of my people got hurt."

"I heard. Ash's report mentioned something like that." Kaidan glanced at him curiously. "They gonna be okay?"

"He'll be fine, but it's my fault it happened." Closing his eyes, Shepard let himself melt into the seat a bit. Would a nap do him any good? They weren't more than an hour off from their destination. "He's not that old, Kaidan. Younger than us by a couple years, at least. Someone that age doesn't deserve this kinda life."

"No one deserves this life," Kaidan said. "Not us, not anyone."

"Hah." Okay, yeah. "That's fair, I guess."

"Tali and Liara weren't that old either. Same with Garrus, actually." There he went being sensible about things. "Gonna tell them they can't fight?"

"Sometimes I think I should've," Shepard admitted. "But I do think he's older than Tali was."

"Everyone was older than Tali was. She was twenty-two, Shepard." A moment passed, then a slow grin spread across Kaidan's features. "You didn't know that, did you?"

Shepard groaned. His hands went up to cover his face. "Christ, I have eight years on her."

"Wait until you do the math with Liara."

"Oh I've done the math with Liara. I was doing the math the moment she mentioned she was only a hundred and six. Then I double-checked it when she pulled me aside to ask if I wanted to have sex. There is no experience more horrifying than being hit on by someone who is physically half your age." He peeked out from behind his hands upon hearing a weird sound, only to realize Kaidan was trying very hard not to laugh. "You shut up. I literally have people messaging me to ask about you  _to this day_ ."

"What, me?" Kaidan pointed to himself. "Really?"

"You  _and_ Garrus. Doctor Michel sends her regards, by the way." 

He hummed thoughtfully. "Isn't she the one we saved from mercs back on the Citadel?"

"That's the one." Shepard pulled out his own omni-tool then, lifting it up. "Want me to read some of the messages out to you? A few of 'em get saucy."

"From her, or...?"

"Anyone. I can keyword search your name. This email's been active for years, so it's got the old messages from back in the day too." It was something to do to pass the time, and Shepard was eternally bad at cleaning out his inbox.

Kaidan seemed to consider for a minute before shrugging and stowing his omni-tool, tucking his hands behind his head as he settled in. "Sure, lay it on me."

And thus Shepard kicked his feet up onto the console in front of him, and began to read.


	14. like you're caught in the undertow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the ship waits for Shepard's return, Kasumi comes up with something to do in the meantime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> him lov shepurd
> 
> really though, i always thought it was weird that Kasumi was coming as your plus one on that mission but didn't dress the part like Shepard did. so, i fixed it. now she is proper arm candy with an alias and everything. she gets to join in the party and Yuli is the big tall distraction. it works!

Yuli had found out early on that being on the same ship as Kasumi Goto was a great way to test one's personal boundaries. She heard every rumor, listened in on every conversation, was tapped into every private email account, and would pop into existence whenever he least expected it. The only space she didn't invade was the bathroom, and even then Yuli wasn't a hundred percent sure she didn't do it, only that she didn't do it  _visibly_ .

He didn't hate her though. Far from it; he actually got along great with her. At least she wasn't doing it to be manipulative. Kasumi just wanted to know things. Facts, much like shiny and expensive things that belonged to other people, would always end up in her possession. She was a magpie in a human's skin.

So when she appeared next to him in the observation lounge in a shimmer of dissipating tactical cloak, his first instinct was not to jump and yell at her, but to feel around for his credit chit instead.

"Hey," she said. "Got a job for you. Interested?"

Yuli sighed, set down the datapad he'd been reading, and scooted just a bit on the couch to give her room to sit. "I'm not supposed to go on any missions right now."

"It won't be hard, I promise." She draped herself over the couch like a lazy cat and continued speaking even as she was in the process of stealing the datapad right under his nose. "Just a little heist. In theory, you shouldn't even need a weapon. Or your biotics, for that matter."

He raised an eyebrow. "If it was just a little heist, you wouldn't need me."

"Okay fine, so maybe it's not that little." Soon enough she'd settled in to read from the stolen datapad, seemingly entranced by his comparatively mundane emails. "Wow, you have a sister?"

"Sisters," he corrected. "Don't change the subject. What are we stealing?"

"My partner's greybox. A man named Donovan Hock has it."

"What's a greybox?"

"Extra wetware memory storage that you can encrypt in case you end up captured. Helps with hacking too." For a moment, Kasumi's usually cheery demeanor faltered. "It's all that's left of him. I'd like to get it back, if possible."

Oh. So, not anything that the person who had it had any right to own. Okay then. "If I pull my stitches or something then Mordin and Chakwas are gonna kill me," he warned her.

"Even if you do, it'll work in your favor where we're going," she said. "A scary merc that starts spontaneously bleeding from a poorly-healed wound? That'll definitely turn heads."

"You've lost me."

She rolled her eyes. "Mister Hock is hosting a party at his villa. Only the baddest of the bad can get in, and I can construct an alias for you way easier than I could with Shepard. The scars only heighten your mystique."

Yuli frowned to himself, reflexively lifting a hand to touch the deep gash on his face. "I guess," he mumbled.

"We'll need to get you a suit, of course. And take some nice staged pictures. It won't take me long to put together a false set of credentials."

"And you?"

She put on a coquetteish air, pushing her arms into her torso to smash her tits together and batting her eyelashes. "Why, I'm just a cute piece of arm candy, of course." The pose was dropped in favor of melting back into the couch not even a moment later. "No one will suspect a thing."

Kasumi was the farthest thing from arm candy on the ship, but he'd take her word for it. "And you're sure you don't want Zaeed for this?"

"Zaeed's been at this for half his life. People would recognize him. That and he wouldn't like the idea of going in unarmed." Yeah, that was fair. "But you? You're always armed. You're a biotic, you wouldn't even need to sneak in a pistol."

Yuli ducked his head. "I'm really not that good."

"Oh, don't be so modest." She gave him a light shove. "You're more than good enough for this. And if we're lucky, it won't even matter."

Briefly, his thoughts drifted to Shepard. What he'd say, how he'd react to Yuli going out on his own. Was Kasumi choosing to do this now because Shepard wasn't around to disapprove? Or did she know that Shepard would try to involve himself? Honestly, Yuli didn't know. Couldn't say, beyond the gloomy thought that it was presumptuous to think Shepard would even care after being maneuvered into a corner like he had a couple days prior; high or not, Yuli had manipulated him.

Was it hypocritical to go on a mission like this after grilling Shepard so hard about the mission from that Alliance admiral? Maybe. But it was still a thing that needed to be done, and Shepard wasn't around to do it. Someone had to step up, otherwise Kasumi would probably run off and do it on her own. And she might get hurt or even killed if she went without backup.

"Okay," he said finally. "When do we leave?"

\---

Up until that point, Yuli had never had the opportunity to fly first class before. A private room on a private flight? Way too rich for his blood. And yet, here he was: standing in front of a floor-length mirror, double-checking the fit of his perfectly tailored suit and wondering how in the hell Kasumi had managed to get his measurements right.

In the background he saw her pass by in a long silk robe, straight black hair spilling across her shoulders; completely carefree in comparison to how she acted on the ship. A rare indulgence, he figured. This was probably as fun for her as it was serious. "Think I should put on an accent?" he asked. "I can pull out a decent Russian."

She hummed as she toyed with something on her omni-tool. "Might not make it through translators."

"That's a no, then."

"Sadly." Her sigh sounded as disappointed as he felt. He'd kinda liked the idea of playing up the Russian villian stereotype. "So, aliases. One more time."

Turning away from the mirror, he straightened out his posture and jutted his chin to play up how sharp his face was. "Solomon Gunn, head of a squad of Talon mercs. I shot my boss when he tried to claim me and my team as collateral as part of an embezzlement scheme, and now I'm the one who's in charge."

She poured herself into a seat, reaching for a grape from a bowl on a nearby table. "And who's your cute date?"

"Sakura Ito, heiress to a red sand dealer." He grinned. "Her father Goro Ito is looking to expand his business."

Kasumi smirked right back. "You know, you really do fill out that suit rather nicely. I should've taken more pictures."

"I expected it to itch more," he admitted.

"Spoken like a man who's never worn a decent suit before."

"You say that like it surprises you."

"Men get to be comfortable in formal wear. As for me, I don't have that luxury." She stretched out in her chair, her small frame swimming in endless ripples of silk. "I have to wear heels, you know."

"If it makes you feel better, I could be the one wearing a dress."

"No, no. As much as I'd enjoy it, I'd rather not stand out if I can help it. The dress can get me places that a suit can't." She tilted her head. "Unless you want to wear a dress. It isn't as if I'd stop you."

Yuli snorted. "Yeah, no thanks. Nothing against anyone who prefers it, it's just not for me. Generally speaking."

"Generally?"

"Well, the kinds of skirts that suit my build are hard to move in. And the kinds of skirts I'd wear that are easier to move in wouldn't look good." He paused, then frowned. "Don't give me that look. You know I'm right."

"I'm just amazed you've put any thought into this."

"Being the only guy in a family full of women does a lot for one's perspective."

She pursed her lips. "Is that the reason for the hair?"

"No, I let my hair grow out because I like it better that way." The Alliance had made him cut it short and he'd hated every minute of it. Even having the sides shaved because bits of it had gotten burnt off felt wrong. "And no, I'm not cutting it for this. The hair is where I draw the line. Sorry."

"Wouldn't ask you to." Her mouth curved into another smirk. "I mean, how would I get to enjoy that look Shepard gives you when you take your helmet off and your hair comes spilling out if I had you hack it all off? Things like that just make my day."

Yuli's thoughts screeched to a halt. "Wait, what?"

She scoffed. "You heard me."

"Shepard doesn't like me for my  _hair_ -"

"But you do know that he likes you," she pointed out. A few seconds passed as he didn't reply. "Or do you...?"

He refused to look at her, mouth set in a firm line. No, he didn't know. He only knew that Shepard was friendly and affectionate towards everyone. That Shepard could probably be backed into a corner by anyone who knew how to take his kindness and use it against him. That anyone on that ship probably had the same chance of waking up to him at their bedside in the medbay.

After a while, Yuli heard her stand up from her seat in a flutter of shifting silk and make her way over. "Oh, sweetie," she cooed, closing the gap and coming into view even as he was determined not to look at her. "You can't see it, can you?"

"I see what he is to everyone," he said. "It's not anything that I have any right to."

"Yet you'd still be insulted if he liked you because of your hair."

"No, I think it'd be an insult to Owen to think he liked anyone because of how they looked." He only realized the implications of what he was saying after he caught her smiling at up at him. "Ugh. Yes, I care about him.  _Everyone_ cares about him. It doesn't mean anything."

"I think it's adorable. And I think you should tell him the moment he gets back."

He bristled at that. "Fuck off, you're as bad as Jack."

She merely laughed and pinched his undamaged cheek; he swatted her hand away with a growl. "So defensive! Don't worry, I won't say anything."

"You better not," he grumbled. Honestly, he was starting to think he might regret going on this mission after all.


	15. many have failed, but i said i would be with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyone could've seen that the mission was going to go wrong, but no one could have ever predicted how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all the Arrival DLC is a trip
> 
> did you know you can do it right after Horizon? because you can do it right after Horizon. my mission progression was literally Horizon -> Arrival -> Stolen Memory -> Collector ship. you do NOT get time to breathe between missions if you're squeezing in the DLCs to cram in a little more paragon/renegade before recruiting Thane and Samara. it's rapid-fire insanity right up to the point that you're given the option to say "no" to continuing the questline and going to get the Reaper IFF. 
> 
> i finished this chapter right quick, huh? anyway there's angst in this one. fun fact: military etiquette dictates that you have to be the same rank or higher to use someone's first name, which is why Kaidan is mostly comfortable using Owen's name here; he got promoted, so they're the same rank now. if anything, it's a transgression for Shepard to still be calling him Kaidan in ME3 as opposed to Alenko. The More You Know, am i right

"Fuck," a voice muttered. "Not a glitch. He's awake. Go get Doctor Kenson, quick-"

And everything had been going so well, too.

The mission had started out fine. Getting through the tired, miserable Batarians was no trouble at all for a couple of skilled biotics used to working together, and Kaidan definitely hadn't lost his edge in the past couple of years. They'd found Kenson in a sorry state, but in the end it hadn't been all that difficult to get her out of there. The trouble only started when she told them she didn't want to leave the system with them just yet, that she wanted to go back to her project. Wanted to show them her progress.

Shepard should've known from the moment Kaidan mentioned that his tinnitus was acting up. Should've guessed. Then there was the artifact - Object Rho - and the vision. Knocking them both for a loop, incapacitating them just long enough for Kenson's goons to get needles into both of them. Kaidan dropped first; Shepard had fought, but eventually the sedatives won.

Then he'd dreamed. In the presence of an unshielded Reaper artifact on full blast, he'd dreamed. The words of the Rachni queen whispering their warning in the back of his mind even as the low, indistinct voice of indoctrination overtook them and spoke to him in his drugged sleep, a terrible amalgam of oily black suggestion that he couldn't fully remember. He had no way of knowing how long he slept for, only that any amount of time spent in that place was too much. Far too much.

When he woke, it was to the ringing in his ears. The  _sour yellow note_ was clinging to the periphery of his consciousness, clawing at him, and he felt like he wanted to tear his way out of his own skin. Felt sick, and terrified, and foggy from sedatives as Kenson's people bolted from the room and locked him in. 

Except he was a biotic. No door could stay locked if he didn't care about collateral damage. With a thought he tore it open, all shrieking metal and splintering reinforced glass, and threw Kenson's goons into the nearest bulkhead with a feral snarl before they could flee.

One was still conscious. He pinned her to the wall without so much as lifting a finger, wrapped up in coiling electric blue as he stepped carelessly over the sparking remains of the door he'd just ripped out of its frame.

"Where's Alenko," he growled.

She pointed down the hall; he nodded, then squeezed the arteries in her neck until she passed out before dropping her and moving on. He needed gear, and he needed to find Kaidan. Then he needed to get Kaidan's gear. After that, he could probably get them both out safely. Probably.

Except that wasn't the only concern, was it?

Panic rose in his chest, threatened to overtake him. The Reapers were coming.  _The Reapers were coming_ . Through this relay, in this system. Three hundred thousand people on the front lines to become husks, followed swiftly by the rest of the galaxy. And if he couldn't warn them in time, the only alternative was three hundred thousand people dead. Their blood on his hands. Their lives snuffed out for some bullshit greater good that was really only delaying the inevitable.

Normally he wouldn't think twice about pouring everything he had into trying to save them. He'd probably die doing it. But he'd made a promise, one he was just selfish enough to want to keep. There was a life out there that mattered more than every single one of those faceless, nameless lives on Aratoht, one he couldn't bear the thought of shattering. Not now. Not yet. And Kaidan, well...

Kaidan deserved better than to die on this rock. Shepard owed it to him as a friend to at least try and save him. Everyone else was expendable, likely to be indoctrinated, probably too far gone to save. But Kaidan was tough. If nothing they'd been exposed to back in the day had been able to do it, then it'd take more than a couple of days for the Reapers to worm their way into his brain. If anything, Shepard had more faith in Kaidan than he did in himself.

(But he'd said he would come back. Yuli wanted him to survive this. So declaring himself too far gone would just have to wait, wouldn't it?)

There were more goons in the halls. A few were armed, but they weren't well-trained enough to put up a fight. Shepard brushed them aside easily with his biotics on his way to wrench open every door that didn't lead directly to open vacuum. It didn't take long to find the right hallways to take him where he wanted to go, followed by the sound of blaring alarms all the way.

And in another room in the medical wing, he found Kaidan. Laid out on an exam table like he had been himself a few minutes prior, out cold from a high dose of sedatives with his breathing being regulated by machines. They'd probably wanted to keep him alive to send back to the Alliance after indoctrination, hadn't they?

Well, Shepard wasn't going to let that happen. Doing some quick math in his head, he set about raiding the nearest supply cabinet for a dose of something, anything to counteract the sedative. Then he removed the IV tube and replaced it with a syringe of his own, shot right into Kaidan's system.

For two minutes after that, the alarms kept blaring. Two tense, awful minutes. Waiting for Kaidan's eyes to open then was one of the worst waits of Shepard's life.

But eventually, they did open. Then squeezed shut again as Kaidan groaned and pressed a hand to his face. Shepard rushed to clear away the machinery, the monitoring equipment, the tubes and wires. He had another shot ready if Kaidan needed it, but they had to be ready to move before Kenson's people showed up.

"Owen," Kaidan rasped.

Shepard squeezed his shoulder. "Right here, Kaidan. It's okay. We're getting out of here."

"No." He started to sit up. "No, we can't. We have t-" A terrible sound was ripped from his throat as he fell back to the exam table, clutching his head. "...Fuck."

"Yeah, I know." Nothing they could do about a migraine right now. "Can you move?"

Kaidan winced. "Don't have a choice, do I?"

"Not really."

He let out a steadying breath. Reaching out, he fumbled his way into taking hold of Shepard's arm with his free hand and clutched it tight like it was some kind of lifeline. "Okay," he said, digging his fingers in, "okay. Lead the way, commander."

They could make it out of this. They had to.

\---

It wasn't long before untrained scientists and staff gave way to trained, indoctrinated Alliance soldiers. And unfortunately for Kaidan, the soldiers had flashbang grenades. Even without the migraine it probably would've been uncomfortable, but with it? Shepard could tell the man was living through his own personal kind of hell.

"We have to keep moving," Shepard would say. Grabbing him by the arm, hauling him up. They both had amps in and had found some gear, but Kaidan spent most of his time behind cover when they weren't on the move. It wasn't like he could shoot straight like this, after all, and using his biotics would just make things worse; whether he liked it or not, he was totally reliant on Shepard to keep them both safe.

Except Shepard was starting to flag too. His head was swimming, ears ringing. He'd had to use his biotics a couple more times to clear barricades and open doors on top of keeping barriers up for two people, and to say it was draining would be an understatement. But he couldn't stop. Not yet. They had to keep going until they got to the main control center, until they could find whatever button they had to push to send this rock straight into the relay and stop the Reapers. Until then, they couldn't leave.

Resistance got stronger as they went. Shepard picked up spare thermal clips from the bodies and kept at it, Kaidan struggling to keep pace alongside him. Over the intercom, Kenson talked about something called the Arrival. How they couldn't stop it. How beautiful it would be. Shepard swung his shotgun around and blew out the nearest speaker he could see, but it still echoed through the compound. Bouncing around inside his skull like the Protheans and the Reapers had before her. Shit, he wasn't even sure if her voice was real or not. Was he hallucinating? That was one of the symptoms of indoctrination, wasn't it?

He felt blindly for Kaidan, finding his hand and squeezing it. The gesture was returned without hesitation; it grounded Shepard enough for him to keep going. Enough to remember why they couldn't leave yet.

Then they got to the control room, and all he could think of was that he was glad Kaidan was the one who was there with him and not someone else. Kaidan, at least, could handle a bloodbath. Could see the kinds of things Shepard was having to do to people with his biotics and not flinch. He wouldn't come out of it as shaken as some others.

Finally, the moment of truth. As the smoke cleared, the two of them stumbled over to the main control console in the center of the room. A timer was projected just above the haptic interface; a countdown to the Arrival.

"I'll do it," Kaidan said grimly.

He stepped forward, but Shepard held an arm out to stop him in his tracks. "Don't."

"Owen, it has to be done." Yeah, it did have to be done. Both of them knew it. "We both know what'll happen if we don't. Let me take the heat for this."

"You're the one who still has a career to ruin, Kaidan. I can't let you be the one to do it." Shepard's gaze flicked between the interface and the countdown. Three hundred thousand. Shit. "Try to contact the colony. I'll start the torches to send this rock into the relay."

Kaidan drew his teeth over his lip. "The Alliance will never take you back if you're the one to do it," he said. "Owen, please. They already think you're insane."

"Fine by me," Shepard replied. He threw a quick glance back at the other biotic. "We came here to save lives, didn't we? Tell the colony they need to evacuate."

With that, he turned back to the console and hit the button that would kill everyone in the Aratoht system.


	16. the pillars of the empire will be burned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It'd be easy, she said. Easy for someone who's good at parties thrown by rich people, sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want y'all to know that Yuli was deeply uncomfortable with this chapter and could not be done with Hock fast enough
> 
> having to flirt with anyone who is not Owen is a terrible ordeal for our young grumpus

Historically speaking, Yuli wasn't the best person to bring to a party. But since he was playing the part of a terrifying gun for hire, he didn't actually have to be good with people at all. He could spend most of it glaring at people from a dark corner and being whispered about with Kasumi occasionally wandering over to snake her arm underneath his and giggle at him, and it would look perfectly normal to an outside observer.

Until she came over with a request, that is.

"I need a voice sample," she whispered.

Yuli glanced down at her with a raised eyebrow. "From who?"

"Hock." She batted her eyelashes, leaning into him in such a way that her spine curved at a ridiculous angle. With her hair up and so much skin on display, she almost looked like a completely different person. "Think you can keep him talking long enough to get a decent phoneme bank out of him?"

"What's a phoneme bank?"

She chuckled, leaning back and patting him on the arm. "Don't you worry about that. Just go and have a chat with our host. I'll tell you when we have enough samples to work with."

Well, he'd take her word for it. "Alright," he said with a sigh. "Wish me luck."

"Break a leg," she replied cheerily.

Fortunately, Hock wasn't a hard man to find. He was standing right in front of one of his expensive artsy fountains, chatting disinterestedly with a powerfully built Asari who had a pretty, waifish human glued to her side.

"Up front," the Asari was saying. "No tricks, Hock."

Hock sighed. "You'll get ten percent up front and the rest when the goods are handed over, and that's final."

"This is a dangerous game you're playing, human. Eclipse sisters don't take kindly to being swindled."

"Look at this logically, my dear. If the goods are legitimate, then even making your money back by selling them will make this worth your effort. But if you sell them, then you lose out on even more money from me, plus some of your reputation. As well as a valuable customer." The man smiled, utterly predatory. "To take this deal is just good business."

The Asari narrowed her eyes, frowning hard at him; her human piece of arm candy pouted cutely. Yuli wondered how much she was being paid. "Twenty percent up front," the apparent merc said finally.

Hock's smile turned toothy. "A pleasure doing business with you, madam." He held out his hand; when she didn't take it, he let it fall back to his side as if he'd never offered it. "Enjoy the party, won't you?"

The merc sneered and broke away. Yuli took a step forward, but didn't make his presence known just yet; that would be rude. He might be playing the part of a ruthless killer, but he was also supposed to be a professional. Professionals didn't barge into things unless it was absolutely necessary, and it definitely wasn't that much of a necessity in-character that he get close to Hock. He had to play it cool.

"Ah, Mister Gunn." Hock waved him over, demeanor immediately brightened. Bastard probably thought he'd found an easy mark. "We haven't really had a chance to talk, have we? Come on, don't be shy. I know your type."

Yuli straightened to his full height. "Hock," he greeted.

"I see you've lost sight of your little friend," Hock noted.

A shrug. "She comes and goes. It's more appealing if they come back of their own accord."

"A patient man, I see." He nodded to himself, then gave Yuli an appraising look. "And if she doesn't come back?"

"She will." Yuli offered a hint of a smile in turn; Hock seemed impressed. "You're flying solo, I take it?"

Hock laughed, a cold and mirthless sound. "Men in positions like ours walk a fine line, Gunn. Too many attachments, and we can be taken advantage of. Too few, however, and we lose out on having fall-back plans."

"Fear is a good way to keep people from crossing you," Yuli suggested.

"A crude method, but an effective one. Not all of us are blessed with your gifts, however." Here, Hock gestured broadly to indicate Yuli's height. "It's easy for a biotic who's close to two meters tall to be intimidating. Mere mortals such as myself must resort to other methods."

That sounded like an opening. "Such as hiring the tall biotic onto your security detail."

"Exactly. You catch on quickly, Gunn." Hock smiled like he'd won. "Surely you can appreciate the reasoning behind it. It's good optics to hire a human biotic, for one thing. It takes you out of the pool for my competitors, for another. And of course there's the old saying, 'keep your friends close'-"

"-'but your enemies closer,' yes. I've heard it." So he didn't trust Yuli yet. Hardly surprising. "Are we enemies, Hock?"

"Oh, I don't know. I like to think of it as a preventative measure at this point." Then Hock seemed to catch sight of something off to the side, and his smile lost its predatory edge. Back to his false cheer in an instant. "Ah, it seems your lady friend did come back after all."

Yuli whipped around just in time for Kasumi to tuck underneath his arm and wind herself around his waist. "Seems she did," he said. "Bored already?"

Kasumi groaned like a spoiled teenager and leaned heavily into him. "People keep making passes at me. It's awful." Only after she'd voiced her complaint did she finally grace Hock with a flat look. "Couldn't you have hired people to liven this up a little? Live music or something?"

It took Hock a second to recover from the blatant disrespect going on, blinking for a bit before his cold smile returned. "My apologies if it isn't to your tastes, dear."

She whined and looked back to Yuli. "Let's sneak off. Do something  _fun_ ."

"I, uh..." Fuck. A fearless merc wouldn't hesitate like this, would he? Yuli glanced between Hock and Kasumi. "If- if you'll excuse me, Hock."

Hock just smirked. "By all means, go make sure that your lady is entertained. Do consider my offer in the meantime, however."

"I will." Relieved, Yuli made as hasty an exit as he could with Kasumi pawing at him, dragging her off to a corner they'd scoped out earlier as being out of sight of security cameras while she giggled and purred and generally made it as obvious as possible that they weren't to be disturbed. It was a good act. Too good, in fact. By the time they were thoroughly hidden enough to break apart, Yuli was deeply uncomfortable.

Kasumi peeled away and gave him a sympathetic look. "Too much?"

"Could've warned me," he grumbled. "Did we get enough?"

"Plenty. There's enough of a sample size to turn him into a one-man Shakespeare production at this point." She twisted to yank off one of her shoes and rub at her ankle with a tired sigh, leaning heavily against the nearest wall. "Now all we need is a bit of his DNA and we should be golden."

That didn't sound too hard.

\---

Ten minutes later, Kasumi flagged him down again with a tight frown that could only mean something unpleasant.

"There a problem?" he asked.

She scooted right up to him without preamble. "I can't get into his room."

"Oh?"

"Apparently he doesn't let women in." She gave him a pointed look. "Security didn't believe my act. I'm gonna need some backup on this one."

For several seconds, all Yuli could do was blink at her. "Doesn't let... Are you saying he's-"

"I'm not his type." Ah. Suddenly that entire conversation from before made a lot more sense. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I just need you to get into his room and get a DNA sample to get past the scanners. Then we hit the vault, get the greybox, and leave."

"But how do you know the guards will let  _me_ in?"

She looked at him like he'd just asked if the moon was really made of cheese. "You can't be serious."

"What?"

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror at all?" She elbowed him in the side. "Go on. Just tell the guards you're there because you want to see Hock in private, and they'll believe you. The time it takes for him to peel away from his adoring fans should be more than enough of an opportunity for you to get our samples."

This was so not his area. "Alright, but what makes for a good sample?"

"Anything, really. Hair, skin flakes, saliva." She shrugged. "Whatever you can find. Multiple samples would be best, though. Just to nail down a full DNA profile."

"Got it." Right. Okay. He could do this, he just had to act... Sultry? Seductive? What kind of act would it even take to convince the guards he was serious? He'd been fine with acting like a slab of beef for Kasumi to pour herself over, but he hardly considered himself charismatic enough to convince people that he was into someone he didn't know.

Maybe if he acted angry about it. Other people thought that was hot, right? And a baseline level of annoyance was totally in-character for how he'd portrayed himself as Gunn so far. It'd make sense if Gunn was feeling conflicted. Disinterested in his date. Yuli could play it as curiosity about the details of Hock's offer, distaste for the kind of business that Kasumi's false background brought to the table. Hock's idea would represent a cleaner opportunity for the kind of man that Gunn was supposed to be.

Yeah. That kind of attitude could definitely work to get him in. But what about getting back out? Shit, this was complicated. He'd take a horde of Collectors or a pile of husks over having to pretend to be into some crime lord anyday. The only kinds of attraction he had experience with wouldn't work, because they weren't the kinds of attraction Hock would respect; he was dealing with a cruel, predatory person here. He had to act in ways that implied he was on the same wavelength as Hock.

He had to be the scary biotic badass Hock expected him to be.  _Wanted_ him to be. Otherwise he'd be caught. Then Kasumi would be caught. And as confident as he was in the pair of them being able to get out of a situation like that, he wasn't so confident in them being able to do it bloodlessly. So his act needed to be perfect for the sake of everyone he didn't want to have to kill.

Standing just out of sight of the guard standing watch over Hock's room, Yuli sucked in a breath, held it for a second. Let it out slow. Then he straightened, shoulders back. Head held high as he put on as stern a look as he could manage. He could do this. He could make the guard believe him.

Well, on with the show.


	17. so are you gonna die today or make it out alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's anything Shepard knows how to get to by mass relay without having to think too hard, it's home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have some harder scifi elements and some Hackett being a worried dad
> 
> it's another short Owen chapter, i'm sorry, the next one is longer to make up for it

Even with new implants and a better amp, Shepard's barriers still didn't hold a candle to Kaidan's. And that's why they were able to survive long enough to make it to the shuttle.

Kenson had a bomb. Shepard tried to talk her down, but her finger was already on the button. She raved about how she'd never get to see the Arrival, rambling at length about how Shepard had ruined everything. She'd been convinced the Reapers were exactly the kinds of glorious machine gods that they made themselves out to be, that they were going to bring peace and harmony to the galaxy. She refused to call off her goons to prevent more death, refused to back down and come with them to testify on her own behalf with the Alliance brass.

Shepard was closer to her than Kaidan was, but Kaidan was faster with his barrier. Didn't matter that he could barely stand afterwards; they were alive. Kenson wasn't. Shepard had done what he could, and now he had to get both of them off of that rock.

Now, the asteroid they were on didn't really have an atmosphere or much gravity outside the main complex. So a biotic charge - even a ridiculously long one that tore straight down the length of the docking platform, dragging Kaidan along with him - wouldn't encounter nearly as much drag or resistance. If anything, he was more worried he'd overshoot. Or worse, accidentally knock Kaidan into something with the force of a runaway bullet train.

How was it that Yuli did it again? Blowing his barriers at the end to shed momentum?

Their helmets were on. Time for the moment of truth; Shepard hoisted Kaidan over his shoulder, tried to ignore the man's wince. The force of the artificial atmosphere leaving the airlock as it depressurized was enough to make him stagger, but he stood firm just inside the mass effect field of the complex's carefully maintained near-Earth gravity. The blood rushed to his head on the first step out. At his side, Kaidan stumbled. He held on that much tighter.

"Still with me?" he asked.

Kaidan's response came through gritted teeth. "Yeah."

"Alright." Shifting Kaidan's weight a bit, his biotics flared in anticipation as he peered out along the length of the docking platform. There was the shuttle, right where they'd left it. "Hold on, alright?"

"Wait, what-"

Shepard charged.

As far as he knew, Kaidan did not charge. It was not even remotely the kind of thing Kaidan did. He was a trained medic, a fine soldier, one of the best biotics Shepard knew - he could do things Shepard had never even heard of a human being able to do - but charging was the kind of reckless nonsense that only heavily armored dumbasses did, and Kaidan was much too careful for that.

So as Shepard landed with enough force to rock the whole damn shuttle, Kaidan was clinging to him like both of them were about to die.

"Jesus Christ-"

"We're  _fine_ ," Shepard assured. "Calm down."

"You could've flung us into deep space with that!" Kaidan sputtered. If he hadn't been awake before, he was now. "D'you know how easy it would be to overshoot?"

"Save the nagging for when we're not about to die." Quickly opening the shuttle's gullwing door, he stepped aside to usher Kaidan in. "Strap in, this is gonna be rough."

It spoke to the urgency of the situation that Kaidan didn't even bother with a comeback. Or maybe his migraine was just that bad; either way, it was Shepard who took the pilot's seat, who took the controls and kicked the engines into gear. It was all Kaidan could do to just collapse into the opposite seat and hold on as they lifted off.

They didn't have much time. The shuttle could obviously outrun the asteroid on the way to the mass relay, but the relays still had a slight delay, and they needed a destination on top of that. Shepard couldn't hesitate for a second in punching the coordinates in. There was no time to account for drift or do any calculations beforehand. He was gonna be flying ass-first into whatever system they ended up in.

Shepard was no pilot. He didn't have the instincts for this. But luckily for both of them, he was a spacer; he could get home from anywhere.

\---

The Alliance definitely weren't expecting to see a Batarian shuttle in the Arcturus system. It took some convincing from Kaidan for them to even be able to dock at the station. But from the moment they landed and stepped off the shuttle into one of the clean, well-lit docking bays of Arcturus Station, Hackett was there in dress blues to greet them.

"What the hell happened out there?" the admiral snapped. "I sent you two out on a rescue mission and now a whole damn system's gone dark."

Shepard and Kaidan exchanged a look; Kaidan spoke up first. "The mission failed, sir," he said.

Hackett's eyes narrowed. "I gathered as much."

"It's my fault," Shepard tried to say, but he was stopped by a sharp glare.

"You know damn well I don't care whose fault it is. All I want to know is why we just lost every comm buoy in the sector." In spite of hardly being a towering figure, Hackett never failed to make Shepard feel small. "If you didn't both look like you were about to keel over, I'd drag you to my office right now."

Shepard ducked his head. "Sorry, sir."

"Don't apologize." The admiral turned to Kaidan, who was trying his damnedest to stand at attention even though he looked like death warmed over. "Alenko. I expected better from you."

"With respect, sir," Kaidan said, "we were given bad intel."

"Maybe so, but I figured that you of all people would be the kind of soldier who could work around that," Hackett fired back, and Kaidan flinched. "Get your asses down to medical. I want both of you in my office for a full debriefing when you're finished."

"Yes, sir," they answered in unison. Again they exchanged a look, but this time Kaidan shook his head and looked away.

"And Alenko, don't let Shepard leave until he gets that face looked at." At this, Shepard reached up reflexively to touch his face, jerking his hand back with a startled hiss when his cheek throbbed like a fresh cut. Had he been hit and not realized it?

Kaidan wasn't oblivious, but he nodded along like he was. "Sir," he acknowledged.

Nodding back as if satisfied, Hackett seemed to relax somewhat. "You boys never make these things easy for me, do you?" he wondered aloud. Then he sighed and straightened back out to the point that he looked like a decorated admiral once more. "Dismissed."

Both of them staggered to the nearest lift, exhausted beyond the point of words. Even if they weren't, there wasn't much left for them to say to each other that they weren't both already aware of; they knew what they'd seen. What they'd done. As the lift closed behind them, Shepard didn't think there were enough words in any language for the enormity of it.

Except they were human, and tiny. So it was a human, tiny thing that eventually broke the silence.

"Feel like I'm gonna be sick," Kaidan mumbled.

Shepard sighed. "Yeah," he agreed, "sounds about right."


	18. i don't want to know the body count

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuli may have fallen, but he has no intention of getting up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have yet another chapter in waiting after this and it's actually a long Owen chapter and i can not stop writing holy hot damn
> 
> no, they still haven't done anything in either of them. Yuli's pining and Owen's thirsty. they're useless.

There were so many things Yuli wanted to tell Shepard on the way back to the ship. About the heist (breaking into the vault, stealing the greybox, setting off the alarms), about the escape (biotics! acrobatics! intimidation tactics! throwing an entire truck at a bunch of security guards who refused to back down!), about Hock (BLEH). It had been a wild ride, exciting to the very end. They'd even gotten to blow up an airship.

But then they got to the dock at the Citadel, and Shepard was there. With Williams, and Lawson, and a guy in Alliance fatigues Yuli didn't recognize. And all that went right out the window, because it looked like someone had gone at Shepard's face with a goddamn potato peeler, and what relief Yuli might've felt at seeing him gave way to horror.

"Uh-oh," Kasumi murmured. "Welp, I'm out. Have fun with that."

Yuli barely heard her. He was already moving, eating the distance with long strides. Shepard heard him coming, and the combination of exhaustion and relief in the man's expression made Yuli's chest ache. God, had he slept? Had he eaten? Just a week away and he still managed to come back looking like someone had put him through a wood chipper.

"What the hell happened?" Yuli asked, looking around at everyone gathered. Particularly the new guy. Who was he? Why did he look guilty all of a sudden? "Owen, what's going on?"

Williams spoke up as if to get his attention. "Hey, Markov! Listen, can we talk for a second real qui-"

"Who's this?" went the new guy, cutting her off.

Yuli huffed. "Agent Yuli Markov, biotics specialist."

New guy looked him over, then hummed thoughtfully and offered a hand. About Shepard's height, with dark hair slicked neatly back and brown eyes. Subtle scars here and there implied the guy was no stranger to a fight; Yuli hoped he wouldn't have to start one. "Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko," the man said.

Yuli took his hand and shook it firmly. "Owen's L2 from back in the day?"

Alenko looked mildly surprised; he glanced at Shepard, then back to Yuli. "Yeah, actually. He uh, he didn't say he mentioned me to the crew."

Then Shepard spoke. "He's not 'the crew', Kaidan." Everyone turned to look at him; Alenko's expression went blank with some kind of realization before he managed to school it.

"Ah." A smile. "I see."

What the hell did he see? Yuli felt a twinge of irrational annoyance that only got worse when he turned his attention back to Shepard and saw the unhealed scarring all over again. "Seriously, what happened?"

Lawson cleared her throat and straightened her posture to try and look intimidating. "Agent Markov, if you'll excuse us-"

"Fuck you, I'm staying." Something about the way she just clammed up and blinked at him for a minute was weirdly gratifying, but he willed himself not to bask in it. "Owen?"

Shepard let out a tired sigh and went into an explanation like he'd had to do it several times already. "Medics back at Arcturus said my body is rejecting my cybernetics due to stress. I've got a mild fever but it doesn't hurt. Chakwas says it's fixable."

"Okay, but why now? You've been stressed since you came out of the Lazarus project." Silence and awkward glances followed; Yuli frowned deeply. "Did something happen? What aren't you telling me?"

"I don't think it's appropriate for us to tell him, Owen," Alenko said under his breath.

Yuli glared at him, but it was Shepard that replied. "It's okay," he said. "Yuli can handle it. Just-"

"Just what?" Yuli cut in.

"-maybe not here?" Oh. Suddenly Yuli understood. Whatever it was, Shepard must've been explaining it over and over again to people since he'd gotten back from his mission. Like the scars, except stressful enough to have caused those scars in the first place. Shepard didn't want to have to explain it again; he didn't trust himself to hold together if he did. It was that bad.

And he was still willing to tell Yuli about it. Shit. "Alright," Yuli said. He offered a tight smile to the others as he started off towards the airlock. "I'll be inside."

"Just head straight to my quarters," Shepard told him. Oblivious to the sharp looks it earned.

Yuli couldn't even bring himself to act scandalized. "Okay." If Shepard didn't care about how it must look, then he wouldn't either. Couldn't make himself, not when this was clearly an act of trust. "Don't take too long."

Shepard's smile could've lit up an entire sector. "I won't."

And because he'd already fulfilled one promise, Yuli didn't feel too bad about believing him.

\---

Now if only EDI would open the door.

"Owen said I could be up here," Yuli was telling her. "Come on, open up."

[Commander Shepard has given strict orders to not let anyone from Cerberus into his private quarters,] she replied.

He rolled his eyes. "I think you're enjoying this."

[I do not 'enjoy' things as you would understand it, Agent Markov.]

"You know he's let me in before. You're just doing this to get a reaction."

[To be fair, agent, you are indeed reacting.] Then the elevator  _ping_ ed its arrival, and Yuli stopped paying attention. As an afterthought, he tugged at his tux to straighten it; he hadn't had a chance to take it off. Should he have stopped to do that? He'd made his way straight to the upper deck because it'd sounded like Shepard wanted him there, but...

Too late. The door opened, and there was Shepard. The scars looked even more stark in the low light out in the hall, almost like they were glowing faintly. Apart from that, Shepard had more scruff, a worse complexion, and even messier hair than usual; in short, he looked terrible.

Yet he still smiled when he saw Yuli. "Hey."

"EDI wouldn't let me in," Yuli said immediately.

[You are technically still a Cerberus agent,] she shot back, as defensive as an eternally calm and placid robot voice can be.

"So are you."

Shepard's smile got a wry twist to it. "Open the door, EDI."

[Very well, Shepard.] The door opened. Yuli scoffed. [Will that be all?]

"Yes, thank you." With that taken care of, Shepard gestured towards his quarters. "After you."

"Out in the hall still too public?" Yuli wondered as he went in.

"Anywhere is too public. Whole ship's bugged. But at least in here I can lock the fucking door, y'know?" And the moment that was done, Shepard made a beeline for the couch to go flop against it. Like he'd been waiting for the opportunity to decompress like that all day, or maybe even all week. All month? Yuli had no idea how long he'd been holding it in at that point. "Christ."

Yuli followed him, hesitant to sit down and join him on the couch. "Owen?"

Shepard paused in the act of rubbing his hands over his face to peek out from between his fingers. "Yeah?"

"What's this about?"

A sigh, a resigned look as he leaned forward in his seat. "When we're done with this mission-" His voice caught, and he winced. "Shit, you're not gonna like this."

"Not gonna like what?" This was frustrating. If Shepard would just explain what had happened-

"I'm going to jail."

The only sound in the room for several seconds was the hum of the ship around them.

"After we deal with the Collectors," he continued, "and after I've tied up all the loose ends with Cerberus. Hackett understands that I can't exactly turn myself in right now. But given how the Aratoht mission turned out, it's the only thing I can do."

Yuli's voice was hoarse when he managed to speak again. Barely a croak. "Why?"

"Because I threw an asteroid at a mass relay." What? "To stop the Reapers. Destroyed a whole system. Killed a lot of people."

This didn't make sense. Shepard had to be leaving something out, right? "You said it was a rescue mission," Yuli remembered. "Batarian space."

"And it was. Rescue went off without a hitch. The problems started when we got back to base and there was an unshielded Reaper artifact giving everyone visions of the coming apocalypse."

Yuli drew his teeth over his lower lip. "Including you?"

A nod. Just the one, slow and solemn. "The people at that base were indoctrinated. They wanted me to become one of them, just in time for the arrival of the Reapers through that relay. I was knocked out for a couple days with it playing out in my head."

"How did you-"

"Prothean beacon." Shepard gestured vaguely at his own head. "Back on Eden Prime. Not gonna say I'm immune, but seeing all that shit definitely made me a lot harder to convince."

Yuli remembered the old Prothean ruins. He remembered being mad at Shepard for not arriving at Eden Prime sooner, too. Now he was just glad Shepard had been the one to get there; that innoculation against whatever the Reapers had tried to do to his head might've just saved his life. "So it was the relay you had to destroy," Yuli concluded.

Shepard nodded again. "Yeah."

"Why not evacuate everyone?"

"Kaidan tried. He was with me, got knocked out at the same time I did. When we woke up, I set the asteroid in motion while he worked the comms." Shepard had to take a second to breathe, just to steady himself. "Nobody would listen to a human."

His words hung in the air for a while, a sickly-soft way to put a death sentence for that many people. Yuli didn't even have to know the exact number; any amount was too many. But dying to a mass relay blowing up was probably better than dying to the Reapers, right?

Right?

No. That would never have been enough of a justification for Shepard. He would've done anything, everything to save those people. He'd never accept a no-win situation like that, he'd do everything he could until every possibility was exhausted and then he'd still keep going because he was just  _like that_ . He'd die before he-

Oh. That was it, wasn't it?

Yuli wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. Might've been crying, who knows. His eyes were definitely burning, and he certainly didn't trust his voice. But crying wasn't what Shepard needed right then. What Shepard needed was to hear that he wasn't a monster. Or that even if he was, Yuli wasn't leaving because of it. He needed reassurance. He trusted Yuli to be the one to give it.

Even if it was Yuli's stupid, selfish request that had forced Shepard's hand in the first place, he couldn't back down. Not now, not without shattering the man into a million pieces.

And Yuli would never do that. He loved Shepard too much. "But you came back," he finally managed to say.

The relief in Shepard's smile made him ache. "Yeah."

"Then that's all that matters." It wasn't, but it would be. Mostly because it had to be, otherwise they'd never be okay again. Yuli still wasn't sure if he could be alright with someone being that willing to tear apart the galaxy for him. He wasn't anything special. If Shepard was willing to do that much for him, then how much havoc could be wrought on behalf of someone that actually mattered, who was actively malicious instead of just an idiot?

And after seeing how much of a mess this had made Shepard into, could he even bear to let that happen?

"That- that Prothean thing," Yuli said, uncertain. "Can you give it to other people?"

Shepard blinked for a moment. "Why?"

"Someone else needs to be innoculated against the Reapers. If, if you're in jail, I mean."

Understanding dawned on him, followed by horror. "No. Absolutely not. Yuli, you have no idea what it's like-"

"Are you saying I can't handle it?"

A wince. "No, that's not what I meant."

"Then let me decide for myself."

"Yuli, please." Standing from the couch, Shepard made his way over and reached out to put a hand on Yuli's shoulder. He didn't let go when Yuli tried to jerk away. "You don't know what you're asking. No one should have to go through what I did with this shit in my head."

"But you went through it-"

"We're talking about the genetically encoded memories of an entire dead race." There was a pause as that sank in. "It'll change you. Just like it did with Liara, and just like it did with me."

Yuli desperately wanted to say that it couldn't be that bad if it'd made Shepard who he was. Except he could see how haunted Shepard was, how little the man slept. How much stress he was under, above and beyond what Cerberus had done. Was this why? This Prothean  _thing_ that had been put into his brain all the way back in the beginning? 

After a while, Shepard let his hand fall away with a tired sigh. "Look, seeing Liara was in the cards anyway. If you still wanna do it by the time we get around to that, we can ask her about it."

"Alright," Yuli said. He didn't totally know what he was agreeing to, but he knew if he didn't, Shepard would stay alone. Alone, he blew up star systems because he was too exhausted and stretched too thin to do anything else and hated himself for it.

That couldn't be allowed to happen.

[Commander,] EDI chimed in over the intercom, [the Illusive Man wishes to see you in the briefing room.]

Shepard cringed visibly. "I'll be right there."

"No," Yuli said. "EDI, tell him to fuck off."

"Please don't tell the Illusive Man to fuck off," Shepard sighed.

Yuli glared at him. "You're exhausted, Owen. You're under so much stress that your body is actually trying to eat itself. Whatever he wants, he can fuck right off with it."

"And if it's something to do with the mission?"

"Then let me handle it!"

From his shocked expression, Shepard hadn't actually considered that. "-okay," he conceded. "But let me do the talking, at least? Somehow I don't think he'll take kindly to you showing up in my place."

Yuli let himself relax a bit. "Fine."

"Right. Okay." Shepard stepped back as if he'd just realized he was in Yuli's personal space, wringing his hands absently. "Then... I guess I'll see you when I'm done."

That was fine. As long as he always came back. "Just get moving before he sends Lawson up to pester you."


	19. his smile i need, and nothing more

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In another life, in a more peaceful time, Owen could have what he wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a long Owen chapter is gonna be followed by a fairly short Yuli chapter. quick, somebody check to see if the sky's falling

Shepard had been about five seconds away from dragging Yuli into a kiss when EDI had chimed in, and the frustration gnawed at him as he headed down to the briefing room to meet the Illusive Man. Frustration due being interrupted, frustration due to how close he'd gotten to doing something unimaginably stupid. It would have been so easy to lean in and take what he wanted; he knew for a fact Yuli would have let him.

The impulse terrified him almost as much as the Reapers did.

He wasn't blind. He knew Yuli cared about him. Half the point of that conversation had been to see if those feelings could survive the kinds of horrors Shepard was capable of. Writing it off as puppy love was a disservice to just how tough Yuli really was, but Shepard didn't think he could take it if things sputtered and died beyond the honeymoon phase, so he had to be sure. And now that he was, it had narrowed his options considerably.

Either he broke Yuli's heart now, or circumstances would do it later. Either he turned down a valuable asset and trusted companion in the war against the Reapers, or he dragged Yuli down with him into a hell that only Shepard was committed to. Either he did something that left both of them gutted, or he'd inevitably have to watch a bright spark sputter and die under the smothering weight of responsibility and expectation. There was no possibility of a clean break anymore.

He was fucked. They both were. It didn't matter that Shepard knew what he wanted and knew it would be worth it. This was a terrible idea.

And the moment he mentioned any of it to Yuli, he'd end up caving. Because Yuli would be- he'd be himself. The only thing stopping him from going all-in, like he did with everything else in his life, was that he didn't know Shepard felt the same way. The moment he knew, he wouldn't hold back. After that, Shepard wouldn't be able to stop himself anymore either.

His fists were clenched tight when he stepped into the briefing room, the door sliding shut behind him. The lights dimmed, the table sank down into the floor, and when the Illusive Man's image shimmered into view, Shepard was decidedly not in the mood to see him.

[Shepard,] he greeted, cigar held between his holographic fingers. [We've got a lead. Thanks to your quick thinking on Horizon, a Turian patrol was able to track that Collector ship and disable it.]

"What are you after, Timmy?" Shepard wondered.

The Illusive Man raised an eyebrow, taking a puff of the cigar and letting out a stream of pixellated smoke. [Straight to the point, I see.]

"The last mission was a setup. By you. How do I know you're not just using me again?"

[Clearly you're willing to give my methods a chance, or you wouldn't be saying anything,] was the response. [Were this less urgent, I'd be happy to defend myself. As things stand, however, we don't have that luxury. This may be our best chance to send a team into the dragon's lair and find out where the nest is without getting eaten, Shepard.]

Shepard narrowed his eyes. "You want me to risk my people to infiltrate that thing?"

[We need to know how they're able to pass through the Omega relay unscathed.] A cruel smile curved the Illusive Man's thin lips. [Surely it's no more of a risk than going into the heart of Batarian space to blow up one of their mass relays?]

The blood drained from his face. "How do you-"

[Commander Alenko's report was remarkably thorough.] A tilt of the head. [It'd be a shame if what happened in the Bahak system affected his Spectre candidacy, but I suppose that can't be helped.]

Kaidan was being considered for the Spectres? He hadn't said a thing. "What are you getting at?"

[An olive branch,] the Illusive Man said. It didn't sound like one. [I don't want to have to make things difficult, Shepard. Nor have you given the impression that you're petty enough to put your own gripes with Cerberus above the mission, although your leadership has certainly pushed a few boundaries.]

His wording made Shepard itch. Although that could've been the flaring of his biotics, sparks tickling at his skin with his annoyance. "But you will make things difficult if I don't cooperate, is that what you're saying?"

[Hardly. Negative reinforcement would do little good in this case. Instead, I'll offer you an incentive: Alenko's career, unscathed.] The cigar was snuffed into an ashtray.

Shepard sneered. Was that all? "Keep your incentives. Kaidan would rather have his career go up in flames than know Cerberus had been behind his success."

The Illusive Man smiled like he'd won. [And the mission?]

"Yeah. It'll get done." He was right about one thing: Shepard wasn't petty enough to throw everything away just because he hated his boss. "Send over the coordinates. And if you think about going anywhere near Kaidan, I'll get your location out of Miranda and beat you to death with your own spine."

[Best hold onto that anger, Shepard. You never know when it could be useful against the Collectors.] The Illusive Man was in no danger and he knew it. [Good luck.]

The moment he'd winked out of existance, Shepard let himself sag with relief. They didn't know about Yuli. Cerberus was fixated on Kaidan, figuring that's who he'd been closest to. If Miranda had guessed, she hadn't said anything to her boss; Shepard felt a spark of hope for her that hadn't been there up to that point. He was as safe as he could get for the moment, and so was Yuli.

Compared to the prospect of Cerberus trying to use his feelings to manipulate him, the mission itself wasn't nearly as daunting.

"EDI, tell Yuli to get a team together," he said to the empty room. "Infiltration. He'll need to be prepared to fight against barriers and armor in close quarters. I'll brief him on the rest."

Like always, EDI was listening. [Understood, Shepard.] Her tone betrayed nothing; he wondered if she would hide his relationships from Cerberus. If she even could. A question for another time, maybe. [Will that be all?]

"What, aside from that?" He thought for a minute. Oh, right. Other things had to happen too. God, he was so tired. Yuli had been right to talk him out of going on the mission. "Tell Joker to take us to whatever coordinates the Illusive Man sends us, make sure the shuttle's ready... Oh, and prep the medbay in case there's any surviving colonists still on board the Collector ship."

[Very well.] He got the impression she'd been fishing just to make sure he didn't forget anything; it wasn't as if she could give the orders for him. She could only relay them.

Honestly, he felt kinda bad for her. All she could do was watch while her humans fucked everything up. "Think you could get Kelly to bring me some coffee too?" he asked after a moment.

It sounded like she was smiling when she replied. [Of course.]

"Thanks, EDI."

\---

The coffee helped, but not enough to stop Shepard from staring when Yuli strode into the cargo hold in his full, repaired armor with his helmet tucked under his arm. A beautiful sight, from his gorgeous dark brown eyes framed by luxurious lashes, to his angular profile and sharp cheekbones, to his ridiculous half-dyed hair that went down to his waist. How did that hair fit into his helmet, anyway? A mystery for the ages.

(It looked silky. Shepard really,  _really_ wanted to run his hands through it. He also wanted to cry and apologize and smother the man in kisses whenever he saw those jagged scars cutting across the slope of Yuli's cheek, but like hell he was going to give in to that particular urge.)

Damn brain. What the fuck was this, distraction o'clock? He set his coffee down on the edge of one of the shuttle's engines and straightened out. "Picked a team?"

"Think so, but I figured I'd run it by you first." Yuli smiled, glancing around as if nervous before approaching. Nerve damage in his face had made it so that his smiles were always a little crooked these days. "Collectors, right? EDI said armor and barriers, so..."

"Yep." Shepard gave him a careful once-over. "You alright with that?"

Yuli rolled his eyes. "I made a miscalculation and got laid out one time, Owen. I'll be fine, it's not about to happen again."

"Just making sure. Didn't wanna send you into anything you're not comfortable with."

"Geth and husks bother me more than Collectors do."

"The Collectors have husks."

"Yeah, and I did just fine with them on Horizon, so that should tell you something." Yuli sighed, shaking his head. "Look, I'll be on comms the whole time. Let me handle this."

He was right. Shepard wouldn't have trusted him to begin with if he couldn't handle it. "Alright, fine." Still, Shepard allowed himself something like a pout. Even if he delegated portions of the mission in the past, he'd never spent the entire thing on the sidelines himself. "Who's your team?"

"Williams and Jack."

Shepard shook his head. "Too squishy. No backup, remember?"

"Fine, take away the extra barriers and replace it with firepower. Williams and Massani."

"In close quarters-"

"That ship's huge, Owen. We don't know that it'll be close quarters." Yuli was already tall, but his full armor with boots added at least an inch; when he got forceful, that extra height made it that much more impactful. It was a good look on him. "Besides, Zaeed can handle mid-range. He picked up a Collector assault rifle on Horizon and he's been itching to try it out ever since."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Perks of just sitting around for a few days while my ribs knit themselves back together, I got to listen to the rambles." Shepard got a laugh out of that. Yeah, he could see it. Zaeed had probably loved having a captive audience. "I'm taking Williams either way."

"Sounds like you two hit it off pretty well while I was gone."

Yuli shrugged. "I've seen her fight. Load her up with incendiary rounds and those bugs won't stand a chance."

That wasn't all of it and Shepard knew it. Ash hadn't said much, but she'd mentioned that  _Markov's a good kid_ in passing, which was high praise coming from her. "You're allowed to be friends with your squadmates, Yuli," Shepard told him.

"She's not-" Yuli cut himself off with a slight frown that showed itself the most through the way his brow got all pinched. He lowered his voice to a half-whisper. "I just don't want Cerberus to get any ideas, alright? A lot of the others can protect themselves, but Williams is wide open."

"Yeah, I get that." Not physically, but emotionally. Mentally. Shepard could attest to Ash having a lot of pressure points. "But I also know Ash pretty well myself, and I know she could use a few more friends."

Yuli blinked a bit. "Ah. Alright, yeah. That makes sense."

"So could you," Shepard added.

More blinking. Then another one of those crooked smiles. "Now you're just projecting."

"Me? Never." Absolutely. Shepard wouldn't have said it if he didn't know what it was like to be alone. Another thing he didn't want for Yuli. "Get your squad suited up and ready to go by the time we arrive. I'm gonna check with Garrus on the status of the Thanix cannon in case we need it."

"Right." Yuli shifted his helmet to his other arm, a subtle way of fidgeting. He always looked so vulnerable to Shepard when he let his guard down like that; it was a stark reminder of how young he was. "Owen?"

Shepard paused halfway to picking his coffee back up. For a split second, his thoughts locked up completely. If Yuli said something now- "Yeah?"

"Thank you. For trusting me, I mean." Dark brown eyes lingered on his fresh, stress-induced scars before catching his own, warm and sincere. Yuli wasn't smiling, but he was being as honest as he dared. "Don't think I ever told you, but it means a lot. Really."

Fuck. Shepard took a second to think as he steadied his grip on the coffee mug. Was he being tested? Or was Yuli just blundering into saying the perfect thing to melt Shepard's brain again? "You think I'd have any reason not to?" he asked after a while.

The knot in Yuli's brow came back. "I- yeah, actually. A lot of reasons."

"Then it'd make sense that since I do trust you, I have enough reasons to do so that it outweighs the reasons that I shouldn't." That's what it was. Lack of confidence. Yuli wasn't used to people putting up with him as he was, huh? Being loved, even if he hadn't figured out that was what it was, had to be confusing for him. "You're smart, you're talented, you've got good instincts. Want me to go on?"

His eyes had gone wide, a faint blush creeping onto his face. "I, uh. No. That's okay." He stared down into the depths of his helmet as he stammered. "I should- I'm just gonna go."

Wow, that was new. And adorable. "Okay." Shepard waved him off, acting like finishing off the last dregs of coffee in the mug was more important than following him into the lift. The Thanix systems could wait a few minutes; no reason to torture the poor man.

(Besides, as much as Shepard hated to see him leave, it was always a treat to watch him go.)


	20. you'll write words and i can be composer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easy for anyone to see that Owen hates being an armchair general.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well i've officially used up my buffer. can i keep going with the rate i've been writing/posting at? who knows
> 
> 20 chapters, hot damn

Massani wasn't hard to convince. Williams, on the other hand, was baffled.

"He literally just got back and Cerberus already has him back in the field?"

"Yeah, it's bullshit," Yuli agreed. "That's why I talked him into letting me do the legwork in his place."

She sighed. Set her book down and stood up from her seat. According to Kasumi, the obs lounges had comfy couches for reading; apparently Williams had discovered this fact as well. "Alright," she said. "When do we ship out?"

Yuli was so, so thankful to have her around.

It turned out to be a long trip, but not so long that they had time for a nap before their arrival. With luck, they'd be done before dinner. Yuli admittedly didn't get all the details of what EDI was going to do when they got to the central control hub - wherever that happened to be - but from what he understood, it would probably involve a bit of hacking. Thankfully he didn't have to do a thing, though; she'd be handling the hard stuff. All Yuli's team had to do was get her in.

Good thing too, because his team wasn't exactly weighted towards heavy use of tech. As much as he would love to have Kasumi along again, overloads and disruptor shots weren't much good in any drawn-out fight against Collectors. Biotics and firepower were what he needed. Or just firepower, if he was to be the only biotic; thankfully, Williams was happy to be the one in charge of the rocket launcher should they need it, and Massani carried around a small arsenal at all times, so firepower wouldn't be a problem.

Against his better judgement, when the call came in saying they were approaching their destination, Yuli went up to the cockpit to gawk. Shepard was there too, a full immersion headset perched atop his head but not pulled down over his eyes just yet; a CO at heart, even when he wasn't in the field. And Joker, of course, but Joker was always in the cockpit so Yuli wasn't sure that counted as noteworthy.

"You're sure they can't see us?" Shepard asked. He glanced briefly at Yuli before turning his attention back to the situation at hand, calm and collected. Probably seeing this as a routine shakedown in comparison to what he'd just been through with that botched rescue mission. Maybe pouring himself into his work was his way of cooling off?

Joker shrugged. "Stealth systems are engaged. Unless they saw us drop outta FTL, but sensors aren't picking up enough life signs for that to matter. Or, y'know, any life signs."

Yuli felt vaguely ill. "No one at all?"

"Eh, don't freak out too much," Joker said. "S'probably just the giant refrigerated truck they use to ship things back and forth or something. Now if the home base didn't have any recognizable life signs,  _then_ I'd worry."

A heavy hand fell onto Yuli's shoulder, and he jerked back from the contact only to realize it was Shepard. Standing there with his reassuring, gentle smile. It shouldn't have been as calming a sight as it was. "Jeff's right. I doubt they're still here."

"Gotta admit though," the pilot continued, "kinda weird that I'm not picking up the crew either. Especially since there's not that much structural damage. You sure our intel's good?"

Shepard scoffed. When his hand fell back down, Yuli found himself missing it. "After Horizon? Nah, I'm not sure about anything." At least Shepard was honest. "About all I can say for this one is that yeah, that's a ship alright. But beyond that? Pffh."

Joker rolled his eyes. "Way to reassure the new guy, Owen."

"Yuli can handle it." The confidence in that statement made Yuli's breath catch in his throat. Shepard was looking right at him too, still with that damn smile that made Yuli want to lock himself in the life support facilities down on the crew deck until he was sure he'd stopped blushing. "Besides, he's not exactly new at this point."

"Listen, until he's looked a Reaper dead in the eyes and come to the conclusion of 'yeah, fuck that thing' like the rest of us, he's still new."

Except Yuli had done that. Two years ago, back on Eden Prime. He remembered it in his nightmares sometimes, that heavy bass sound that had torn through him like a shudder up the length of his spine. His terror at war with his determination,  _he had to protect them_ -

Joker's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "Alright, this is as close as I'm gonna get," he said. His expression was bland when he finally glanced back at Yuli; the Collector ship loomed in the window over his shoulder, massive and imposing compared to their tiny stealth frigate. "You ready for this, new guy?"

Yuli swallowed thickly and nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be." Not that it mattered given that this was going to happen whether he was ready or not, but he figured he was. "See you on the other side?"

"Yeah," Shepard agreed. "Good luck in there."

He quietly hoped that he wouldn't need luck at all.

\---

The shuttle landed where it could. Weird that the ship was wide open like it was, but Yuli found it weirder still how quiet it was when they stepped out. Things were still running, but barely; life support and the mass effect field generators that ran through the deck beneath their feet were both offline, and the ambient light was dim enough that he'd swear everything was running on emergency power.

"Mag-locks," he ordered the second he stepped off the shuttle, reaching down to engage the magnetic soles in his boots. He allowed himself some satisfaction both Williams and Massani followed suit without comment. Good; they listened. Hopefully they'd keep listening.

And into the belly of the beast they went.

Through his armor and undersuit, it wasn't cold. He could be floating out in the vacuum of deep space and still not be cold physically. Yet somehow, the interior of the drifting Collector ship made him shiver with its wrongness. All around him, it looked like a proper (albeit alien) ship had been encrusted with centuries worth of wasp or mud dauber nests. Like the Collectors hadn't so much built it as they had salvaged it and made it their own.

"Creepy," Williams mumbled, running her fingers over a dry and flaking piece of wall. "Feels weirdly familiar too. Like I've seen this architecture before."

Yuli couldn't deny that he had the same feeling. "Owen, are you getting this?" he asked over the comm, remembering the VR headset from earlier.

[I'm with Ash on this one. This design feels... I dunno, Yuli.] Shepard paused. [Can one of you get me a better view of that panel?]

He looked around to try and see what Shepard was talking about, but Williams was already on it. Down the hall, a couple of empty pods flanked a dead console encrusted with buggy grime; she leaned in to peer at it as Yuli watched on.

When Shepard spoke again, his tone was a mix of awe and horror. [Dear god,] he breathed. [No, that's impossible-]

"What's wrong?" Yuli asked.

[It's Prothean.]

Williams jerked back from the console like it'd burned her. Behind them, Massani scoffed. "The Protheans have been dead for fifty thousand years, mate."

[Look, I know what I'm talking about, alright? That script is written in one of the dominant Prothean dialects from around 49,000 BCE. It was old-fashioned by the time they encountered the Reapers.] Yuli remembered what Shepard had said, the knowledge locked away in the man's head. He believed every word that Shepard was saying now. [But it's wrong. This ship, it's wrong. I don't like this, Yuli.]

He wasn't used to hearing the man so shaken. "Maybe the Collectors found it lying around," he said.

[The Protheans wouldn't have left a cruiser just  _lying around_ , Yuli!] Shepard snapped. Terrified, near-hysterical. Yuli heard him taking a second to just breathe over the comm, and the mental image of it was uniquely unsettling. [Something about this isn't right. Be on your guard, all of you.]

"Owen-" Yuli started to say.

Shepard cut him off before he could get any further. [Just get in, get the data, and get out,] went the final order.

He'd never wanted to hold Shepard more than he did in that moment. Steeling himself, he headed past the console and the empty pods that flanked it and tried not to picture how the other man must have looked right then. "You heard the man," he said, "let's move out."

Scary or not, they needed that data.


	21. tell me where do i go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like the vastness of space he calls home, nothing about Shepard is small. Even his emotions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **content warning for: panic attacks**
> 
> i HTML'd that myself. hee
> 
> in WoW i used to do this thing i called a pally drop where i'd dismount high in the air and then bubble right before hitting the ground. it went wrong about as often as it turned out badass. just figured y'all should know that Owen's tendency to do stupid shit isn't without precedent.

Switching off the comm and flipping the headset back up, Shepard leaned heavily against Joker's chair as he tried to will himself to calm down. He could feel sweat running down his neck, sticking his hair to his forehead, and his heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest.

A panic attack. His grip on the back of the chair was enough to turn his knuckles white; it was an honest-to-god panic attack. He couldn't afford to have those. If he was panicking when things were calm, what about when things got serious? In the middle of a fight, or during an important mission? He dealt with high-stress situations all the time. This wasn't okay. He had to calm down, and fast. If this mission went wrong and Yuli needed him-

"Uh, Owen?" He blinked down at Joker, who was peering up at him with a slight frown. "Mind toning down the glowing?"

Shepard's hand flew away from the back of the seat, biotics fizzling out. "Sorry."

"You okay?"

He wanted to say he was, but... "No." Some of the tension left him with the admission. "I'm not. I'm really not."

Joker sighed and leaned back in his chair, still tense. "Want me to take over?"

"No. I need to do this, I just..."

"It's okay to have triggers, Owen." Yeah, it was. Except when Shepard's came up, it cost people their lives. "I got some too. So do a lot of people."

This was gonna be one of those conversations, wasn't it? "When the mission is over, I'll deal with it. Until then, I can't afford to."

"Uh-huh, sure. Nevermind the fact that it's  _you_ we're talking about so everything gets treated like a mission." Joker snorted. "You're never gonna deal with it, are you?"

"I will. Just not now." Maybe when he eventually ended up in jail for horrific war crimes. He'd have plenty of time then, wouldn't he? And easy access to military-grade shrinks that weren't Kelly Chambers. God, the psychs back at Arcturus or on Earth would have a field day with him. "I'll be fine, Jeff."

"Yeah, right, you're fine. It's fine. Everything's  _fine_ . You're like a vid stuck on loop sometimes, I swear." Still, Joker managed to relax a bit. "Did you know this was gonna happen?"

Shepard frowned. "No?"

"Right. Figured I'd ask since you're not on the mission and all. Thought maybe you'd begged off 'cause you knew it'd be upsetting or something."

No, he hadn't. "Yuli didn't want me to go," he said. "He was pretty insistent."

"Really?"

"Yep." Shepard dropped the headset back down, switching the view back on. Three views that he could control and switch between with the tiny electrical impulses that moved his eyes; an expensive piece of tech. Great for gaming when he got too deep into his own head. "Still no life signs?"

Joker was quiet for a moment. "...Huh."

"Taking that as a 'no'."

"Well I'm not seeing the team's life signs either, so..."

Shepard smiled, a mirthless thing. "Like a vid on loop," he mumbled. Then, "Yuli, status."

The response was immediate and clear. [Still no sign of hostiles. Lot of dead bodies with what looked like track marks, surgical incisions.]

"Human?"

[Collectors too,] Yuli reported, grim. [It looks like they're experimenting on their own kind as much as they are on humans. We found another console, too. Looked like it was doing DNA comparisons?]

"Any idea what they might've found?"

[Only that one sequence looked way more complicated and twisty than the other.]

Shepard's breath caught. "Quad-strand DNA?"

[I mean, maybe? You're asking the wrong person, Owen. It was all weird graphics and funky text to me.]

"Look again, I'll tell you."

A pause. [Massani, head back and check the console.] Shepard shifted his attention to the appropriate view as Yuli continued, [I'll be honest, I have no clue what you're talking about.]

[He thinks it might be Prothean,] Ash cut in. [I dunno, Shepard. Do the bugs look Prothean to you?]

[They might be a kind of husk,] Yuli said. [Then it doesn't really matter what they looked like before, does it? Beyond being a vaguely similar shape.]

"If that. We only have the one standard to go by. Who knows what the Reapers are capable of doing to a species."

[Then I'd say it's even more plausible.] Things went silent again for a bit; Shepard watched through Zaeed's view as the old merc came up on the console in question, the controls lighting up with his proximity. Yuli, who couldn't see anything except Zaeed moving out of sight, was naturally curious. [What's the verdict, Massani?]

Zaeed's gruff voice scratched its way over the comms. [Shepard's right,] he said. [Quad-strand DNA. These goddamn bugs might actually be the real deal.]

Shepard could feel his heart racing all over again.

"Shit, uh..." He let out a slow breath. "Keep going. And stay alert. They're jamming us up here."

[Commander Shepard.]

He jolted upright. If EDI was talking, then it was probably important. "What is it, EDI?"

[The Turian communications that were intercepted are being broadcasted from the Collector ship,] she told him. A sick feeling of dread twisted its way into his gut. [There's no way the Illusive Man would have thought it was genuine.]

Cutting off the comm again, he pulled the headset off and leaned his weight into Joker's chair. He closed his eyes as a gnarled hand sympathetically covered his.

Everything in him screamed that he should scrub the mission. Throw everything aside and just get out. This was a set-up. The Illusive Man wanted the data so badly that he was willing to throw all their lives away for it. But why?  _Why?_ Was he testing Shepard? Or was there something on the other side of that relay that he wanted to get his hands on that much? What else was he not telling them? How many people was he going to throw into the meat grinder?

"I'm suiting up," he said, handing the headset to Joker. "Get the airlock parallel to the team's LZ and under two hundred meters away."

Joker balked at that. "Wait, you can't be serious."

"If I charge, I can make it-"

"And break every bone in your body when you land!" He grabbed Shepard by the arm, twisting in his chair as his fingers dug in. "Owen, come on."

Shepard paused just long enough to look at him. To take in the worry and the hurt in his eyes. Joker had never been sentimental, but he'd always cared. Shepard just hadn't ever been attentive enough to be worth that care. "It'll take me a few minutes to suit up," he said, gently. "If I start now, I might be able to intercept them by the time the Collectors spring their trap. I want my team out of there alive, Jeff."

"You're just gonna get yourself killed." Joker's grip wasn't strong enough to bruise, but Shepard could still feel blunt fingernails biting into his skin. "Please. New kid was right, just let him handle this."

Sighing, Shepard pulled his arm away. "Under two hundred meters," he repeated. "Further than that and I actually will end up breaking something when I miss the mark due to drift."

The pilot looked like he was about to cry. "Come on, don't do this. I already lost you once."

"And I'm not gonna do that to you again if I can help it. But right now, I have to do this." Shepard finally turned away, heading away from the cockpit. "Keep an eye on them. If anything happens, I want to know about it."

He heard Joker breathe in sharply, followed by the quiet mechanical whirring of the chair being spun back around. "Yes, sir."

Yuli might very well be able to handle it alone, but Shepard wasn't willing to take a chance with his life.

\---

It happened while Shepard was in the middle of getting his boots on: a flicker from the lights down in the armory, followed by the emergency lights switching on. For three tense seconds, things stayed that way. Then the lights came back on, and Shepard hastened to finish getting all his gear together.

"EDI, status," he snapped.

[I have gained access to the Collector ship's systems, but the Collectors are now attempting to gain access to the  _Normandy_ in turn,] she said. 

Oh. Well then. "Think you can fight 'em off?"

[Of course, Shepard.] If a machine could sound insulted...

He grinned. "Atta girl." The last straps were tightened, the final seals were checked. His helmet was the last thing he tugged on, locking into place with a hiss. "How's Yuli?"

[Agent Markov is currently engaged in combat with the Collectors on the ship. They are attempting to cut off his squad's escape.]

"Figured as much." He patted a bulkhead on the way by as he picked up his shotgun and headed up the length of the ship again. "Keep 'em occupied, EDI. You can do this."

He would've charged his way to the airlock if he could justify doing it inside the ship. In this case, his legs alone would have to do for getting him there. It didn't even take a half a minute, but it still felt too long. Too far. Like every second was a second wasted. He hit the controls for the inner door the moment he got there, glancing over at Joker in the cockpit; there was a time he would've hesitated just by virtue of the pilot's insistence.

But that time was long gone. "Are we in position?"

"All set," Joker replied. He sounded resigned to it. "Don't take too long, alright? I'm still not over losing the last ship."

Or Shepard, for that matter. "Just keep the engines warm for when we get back." It wasn't enough, but he'd worry about that later. Right now, he had a team to save.

He stepped into the airlock, closed the inner door behind himself. Waited for it to seal. Then, he opened the outer door to the vast nothing of space.

This part was always the most tense. Any time he did a spacewalk, he had a fleeting moment of anxiety where he wondered about all the seals on his suit, the integrity of his helmet. Technically speaking, he hadn't actually done a spacewalk since before he'd died; he supposed that if he were anyone else, he might be panicking right now. It could be argued that space had been the thing to kill him.

Except it hadn't. His barriers had held against space. It was planetfall that had killed him, cooked through the barriers and boiled his brain into unconsciousness through his helmet. Space? Ha! That would never be the thing to kill him. He'd been born in it. Lived in it all his life.

As he pushed off from the ship and let the weightlessness take him, he'd swear that he never felt more in tune with the universe than he did in moments like these. Adrift, tiny, tethered to nothing. Only in two directions - with the  _Normandy_ behind and the Collector ship looming huge and terrible in front - did he even see anything that his brain could use to orient itself. The rest was a vast sea of black nothing scattered with bright, glittering dust, huge beyond comprehension. His mission was a grain of sand on Tuchanka in comparison.

Yet at the same time that he was comforted, he also felt the beginnings of a quiet frustration. A selfishness borne from being reminded of how tiny he was. He wanted to leave things better than he'd found them. Always had. Space offered him a scale with which to it that was so vast, no mortal mind could grasp it. If he succeeded, he could shift the weight of the galaxy. If he failed...

He'd be nothing if he failed. Like spitting in the ocean. Pointing a desk fan at a hurricane. Now that he knew the size of what he could do, the scope of what he could touch, how could anything less be considered enough? It'd take something just as big in its importance to him to match that, to shift him in his course.

Like fear. Or love.

Or both.

His eyes snapped open. His target was a teeny rectangle in the distance, a blotch of light against the dark smear that was the hull of the Collector ship. If he kept drifting, he'd get there in a couple of minutes, and he'd be off the mark when he did it.

Electric blue raced down along his limbs, surrounding him in a sheath of light. No resistance from the air. No great swells of local gravity to consider. Ideal conditions to max out a charge.

He tore through a hundred ninety meters of space in the span of a second, slamming into the side of the shuttle on the other end where it'd landed. A howl ripped its way out of his throat as he felt his right shoulder crunch with the impact.

[Owen!] Joker's voice came through the comm loud and clear, terrified. [Fuck,  _fuck_ , I fucking told you-]

"It's fine," Shepard ground out, cutting him off. Straightening with a wince and reaching down with his left hand to engage the magnetic field generators in the soles of his boots. "Dislocated. I've had worse."

[You better not be lying, you suicidal piece of shit.] The pilot huffed, but he knew better than to waste more time than that trying to argue further. [EDI's knocked out whatever was jamming our scanners, they've got Markov's team pinned about a hundred meters from your current position.]

Shepard wasn't technically lying. It was dislocated, and he'd had worse. But he was pretty sure he'd broken something even with all the fancy cybernetic meshes. His hardsuit was already trying to compensate by flooding the area with medigel, but that'd take time he didn't have; he needed to move. "Understood." He got to his feet and hefted his shotgun with his left hand. "Tell me where I'm going and I'll get things moving again."

Joker sighed. [Alright. Yeah.] He was psyching himself up as much as Shepard was, huh? [Keep going past the LZ, then take a right up ahead...]

God, Shepard would seriously have to thank him later.


	22. men are meant to be more than the shadows of each other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it because Shepard doesn't trust him, or is it something else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo what's up it's 8 AM and i've been writing for hours
> 
> i'm still writing btw, the next chapter is already half-done and i am on a ROLL. i know this one's short but the next one will be worth it, promise

Retrieving the data had been the easy part. Now they just had to get back to the shuttle, and they'd be fine. Easy, right?

"Starting to think we weren't given all the details up-front about this mission," Yuli droned, loud in his own ears. He heard Massani snort while another rocket from Williams went whizzing past them as a stand-in for a reply. The lack of atmosphere meant that the only sound he heard beyond himself was their comms, with the occasional vibration through the deck below them. It made everything eerie, like his handful of spacewalks during basic training; add it to the disorienting weightlessness only marginally affected by his boots, and he was out of his element.

Not that he'd admit it. Especially not with one of those Praetorian things bearing down on them.

"Massani, how are you on ammo?" he called out.

The merc grunted. "Still got a couple clips left."

"Williams?"

"Two more shots from this thing, four grenades, one thermal clip," she replied, hefting the missile launcher. The Praetorian turned its beady eyes towards her and she ducked behind cover a fraction of a second before the wall behind where her head had been got fried by its particle beam. "I hope you've got an idea, 'cause that thing's between us and the exit."

"Just one: I get in close and bust its barriers, you two crack it open while I have it distracted."

"Isn't that what got you cooked by its big fuck-off lasers the last time?" Massani asked dryly.

Maybe, but at least now he knew it  _had_ a laser. "Got a better idea?"

"Flashbang and run. I'll provide cover fire."

"Absolutely not."

"Well then, I guess we'll just sit here with our thumbs up our asses until it fries the lot of us," the merc said. Another beam hit the cover Williams was sitting behind and she spat out a string of curses.

This wasn't working. Yuli sighed and whipped out his lashes. He'd have to be fast; he couldn't outrun the particle beam, but he could outrun its ability to target him. If he was quick enough-

A blue streak tore through the doorway that the Praetorian was guarding. Slammed into it, knocked it into a wall. Yuli felt the vibration without hearing it, bolting upright with his jaw hanging slack.

Then he laughed. "You dumb son of a bitch!" he hollered, shock bleeding into a mixture of anger and relief.

Shepard blasted the Praetorian with his shotgun as he landed, his right arm held limply at his side. There was a pained grin implied by his voice when he spoke. "Figured you folks could use the assist," he said. "Help me out with this thing?"

Yuli didn't need to be told twice. In a surge of dark energy he flung himself forward into the fight, catching one of the thing's legs in his lashes and yanking just as it was recovering from Shepard's charge. Then Shepard blasted it again before it could target him, and the hesitation made the particle beam go wide and tear a swath through the floor.

"Ash, hit it!" Shepard barked. One rocket made it flail and jerk. The second reduced it to helpless spasms. Yuli watched the light leave its eyes and fought against his own horror.

But it was dead, right? "Grenade," he ordered, letting go with his lashes and stowing them. Williams came forward and dutifully handed him one, which he activated and flung into its gaping, husk-filled maw, following up by promptly throwing up a barrier around the corpse. The minor explosion made it flicker, but didn't quite blow it; he allowed himself a brief moment of pride.

Shepard whistled. "Nice."

"Quiet, I'm pissed at you right now." He let the barrier fade out. "We need to get back to the shuttle."

Luckily, there wasn't any argument on that. "Can do," Shepard said, turning back the way he came. "Follow me."

\---

It was a mad dash to the shuttle, followed by a blur of activity as Williams spun up the engines and Massani settled into the co-pilot's seat. Whatever adrenaline that had been fueling Shepard up to that point was clearly waning as he stowed his shotgun and took a seat in the back, breathing hard through the audio pickup in his helmet; Yuli stared him down as they took off, still annoyed.

"You're hurt."

Shepard glanced up. "Yeah, that happens sometimes."

"When you charged in, you led with left," Yuli continued. "You were already favoring that arm before you even got to us."

"Because I did it earlier and landed wrong."

"Must've landed more than just a little 'wrong' to fuck up your whole arm like that."

Shepard let out a tired sigh. "Look, we can talk about it when we get back to the  _Normandy_ -"

"Or we get back to the  _Normandy_ and then we don't talk about it at all, because instead you decide to tie me up in knots so I stop thinking about it and don't question you."

Several long seconds passed. Yuli wished he could see the look on Shepard's face instead of having to stare at a helmet; the mission going to shit like it did had made him realize things, forced him to look back at their conversations more critically. He was starting to wonder if Shepard really trusted him after all.

But in the end, he was still soft enough to give Shepard the benefit of the doubt. "I... Listen, I'm sorry," he said eventually, ducking his head. "You didn't deserve that."

"No, I did." Fuck, Shepard didn't even sound insulted. "But let's seriously not do this here, okay? And maybe not on the  _Normandy_ either, at least not in a room that's bugged."

Oh. "You think Cerberus is listening in."

"Cerberus is always listening, Yuli. If they can so much as scan the floor we're standing on, they can hear what we're saying." Shepard tapped his foot twice against the deck of the shuttle. "I might be able to figure something out to get around it that doesn't involve renting out a private room on Omega, but right now?"

The shuttle landed, the sound of it heavy and loud around them. Yuli swallowed and nodded. "I understand."

"Good. Now, help me up."

And that was as far as that conversation went.

Yuli kind of went numb after that. The  _Normandy_ sped out of the system before the Collectors could fully wake up their ship, Shepard was rushed to the medbay. Williams tried to get him to eat at one point, but it was lost in a sea of noise along with getting changed out of his hardsuit and stowing his gear. The side of him that appreciated the rescue was at war with his sense of hard-earned pride, his feelings fighting back against the terrible thought that Shepard had lost confidence in him. That Shepard had never had confidence in him to begin with. 

Because the other option was that Shepard had been so afraid of what might happen that he'd leapt in to help without so much as a passing thought given to his own safety. And then that left the question of who it was that Shepard had been afraid  _for_ , which led to Yuli comparing himself to Massani and Williams, and...

And. He couldn't. He just couldn't. The thought that it was someone else hurt too much, and the thought that it was him was, well. Unthinkable. Because it couldn't be, right? Shepard had so many other people he cared about. He loved everyone, and everyone loved him right back. That was just how it was, how it had to be. Easier for Yuli to think he'd been wrong about himself and his own abilities than it was to think that someone like that could be afraid for him.

[Agent Markov,] EDI's voice chimed in, breaking through his thoughts over the intercom in the crew quarters. [Commander Shepard would like to see you in his quarters.]

His head jerked up from where it'd been resting against his arms, heart skipping a beat. "Tell him-" Fuck. Was his voice seriously cracking right now? He cleared his throat. "Tell him I'll be right there."

[Very well.]

Just like that, he was headed for the elevator.


	23. you make the moon our mirrorball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything has changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a million feelings about this one. it was super fun to write and ended up being really, really fluid. it also ended up being the longest chapter i've written yet for this fic. 
> 
> did not expect Yuli to be the one to do the Haestrom mission when I did my outline. but then i also did not expect Owen to yeet himself at the collector ship like a dumbass. so i'm posting this now, right as i've finished it, just to get myself working on what happens next.

"That should do it," Kasumi said, brushing her hair back before stowing her omni-tool. Her lips were pursed in a catlike smile as she knowingly regarded Shepard, wrapped shoulder and all. "You're really doing this, aren't you?"

"I owe it to him, Kasumi." Shepard couldn't hide anymore. It was either this or smash Yuli's trust in him to pieces, and he didn't want that. "You're sure you got all the bugs?"

She shrugged. "Short of stripping the outer hull's sensors, I've done all I can."

"I had an idea about that, actually. Null-gravity could-"

"Still wouldn't do anything about the sound waves carrying through the air in the cabin, Shepard." Her smile softened then, completely sympathetic. "Besides, I was joking. I've traveled via hull-voids enough to know that you're as safe as you're going to get."

He relaxed. "Yeah. Alright. Sorry, I'm just nervous."

"I can tell." The door to the cabin beeped; she craned her neck to glance back at it. "Sounds like he's here. Good luck, Shepard."

"Yeah, thanks for the help."

"Anytime." With a flourish of long, dark hair and expensive silk robes, she headed for the door. Yuli was on the other side when she opened it; she winked at him as she slipped past, leaving him blinking in confusion.

Meanwhile, Shepard could only stand there. Drinking in the sight of him, soft pants and a loose shirt concealing the sharp lines and angles of his lanky figure, hair tied up in a messy bun. It was such an effortless sort of look, nothing like Shepard at all; hard for him to feel like anything but a scruffy, unkempt mutt compared to that. Or an old, threadbare shirt that wasn't fit to be worn out of the house.

Yuli looked at him then, confused. Concerned. "Owen?"

He let himself smile. "Hey."

"You..." A mess of emotions pulled at Yuli's features until he seemed to settle on a frown. "God. You still look like shit."

"Hah!" Shepard shook his head, the smile becoming a grin. "Chakwas said I was good to go as long as I took it easy for a while. For real, this time."

"What's the damage?"

"Fractured collarbone, dislocated arm, some other fractures in and around my shoulder..."

Yuli balked at him. "How?"

"Shoulder-checked the shuttle. S'what I get for using it to aim my charge." Shrugging made him wince as pain shot through his right side. "I got Kasumi to clear the room out, by the way. No one's gonna hear us."

There. A sharp little intake of breath, not quite a gasp; Yuli had always worn his heart on his sleeve, and tonight was no exception. His excitement couldn't be more obvious. "Okay...?"

And the thing was, Shepard knew he wasn't worth that excitement. He'd done so much harm, hurt so many people, but that wasn't even the worst part, was it? No, the worst part was how little he cared. How he didn't even need all those rationalizations to hurt them if he'd done it out of fear, or for the sake of a single person that he happened to be close to. He'd do it all over again without hesitation - hurt himself, hurt others - if the reasons were personal enough.

Yuli wasn't like that. He had empathy. He didn't need personal or selfish reasons, he just did things because he thought they were right. Shepard didn't think it was even possible for him to be selfish. He was just fundamentally  _good_ , driven to at least try to do right by people no matter what.

How could Shepard not love that? How was he supposed to keep himself from wanting to protect it, hold it close, keep it safe? "Earlier... I wasn't trying to overrule you, or undermine your authority," he said. "Or anything like that."

Immediately, Yuli started bristling. "Doesn't matter what you were trying to do, it's what you  _did_ ."

"I know. And I'm sorry." He knew that wasn't worth much, but he had to say it. "We were set up. The intel was bad from the start and the Illusive Man knew it. EDI was the one to figure it out, and when she did... I. Kinda panicked."

The tension melted away. "Oh."

"Yeah. I mean to be fair, I was already panicking before that. I had to take the headset off a couple times just to keep myself from going 'fuck it, we're scrubbing the mission, get back to the ship' since I knew you'd hate that."

"No shit."

"But it wasn't about you. It wasn't ever a matter of not being confident in what you can do, it..." Shepard hesitated, words catching in his throat. "You asked me about the Protheans before, and. Well. That's what it does to me. Remembering all that, with the knowledge tied up in the experiences that surround it. The whole time, I was thinking worst case scenarios."

Yuli's mouth opened like he was about to say something before he closed it again, covering it with one hand and looking away. "...Shit."

Ah. He was upset now. "Yuli, don't-"

"And you've been alone with that," he said, looking up again with that piercingly beautiful gaze. Worried and horrified in equal measure. "For what, how long? Since Eden Prime? Just sitting on it all this time, letting it eat you alive?"

Shepard couldn't find it in himself to fight it anymore. "Yeah," he sighed, sagging. "Liara knows a little, but she's an Asari. It's different for her. Easier, I guess."

"And that's what scared you into trying to help?"

He bit his lip. This was why he'd gone to all this trouble, wasn't it? Why he'd cleaned out all the bugs, called Yuli up here? "No," he said. "No, if fear was all it was I would've just booked it."

Yuli blinked for a second. "What? No, you'd never do something like that. Don't say that about yourself."

"Yuli, the truth is..." He trailed off, head falling forward as he stared at the floor. "The truth is, you only know the side of me that's been trying its damnedest to be the kind of person who's worth being near you."

The room went very, very quiet.

"EDI told me that the intel was bad when I was already in a bad headspace to begin with, but those two things wouldn't have gotten me to go in. It was all that on top of being scared of losing you that got me off my ass." Shepard laughed; a small, near-hysterical huff. "Shit, part of why I left for Aratoht was because I needed time to get over the fact that you'd gotten hurt because of me."

"Owen..." He didn't dare look up. Not yet. He still had things he had to get off of his chest.

So he kept going. "I'm gonna end up hurting you," he said. "If I let myself have this, I'm gonna dig in and not ever wanna let go."

"I'd let you," Yuli told him hoarsely.

"Yeah. I know." Shepard finally tipped his head back to smile, feeling terribly fragile in a way he wasn't used to. "You'd let me. And then I'd get sent to jail, or I'll die on this mission, or the Reapers will get me-"

"And it'd be worth it!" With a fire in his eyes, Yuli stormed right up into Shepard's space, close enough to touch. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me it wouldn't be worth it." A pause. "See? You can't, can you?"

Shepard flinched. "Look, I've seen what can happen-"

"To  _Joker_ . Who's a closed-off asshole who probably never once made you feel validated because he's too emotionally constipated to ever admit he has more depth than a fucking puddle." Yuli huffed. "There, see? You're smiling again. You know I'm right."

"I could still die on you."

"That's true of literally anyone in the universe."

"And I'm still almost definitely going to jail."

"Then I'll just have to get Kasumi to help me break you out. She owes me anyway." He rolled his eyes. "Look. You want this, right?"

Shepard couldn't help his smirk. "I mean, yeah."

"Cool. So do I."

"But if you let me get started, I'm not gonna want to let go," he added.

Yuli turned a dark, rosy pink around the edges, and scoffed to hide how flustered he was. "So don't. I don't care."

"I'm serious." Shepard stepped up even closer, lifting his workable hand and cupping that scarred cheek. Yuli stiffened under his touch. "I'm gonna go all-in."

"That doesn't scare me, Owen."

"Maybe not now," he conceded; his thumb traced the terrible, jagged remains of his mistake on Horizon as he felt the muscles in Yuli's jaw twitch and tighten. "But if it happens, I need you to not try and act tough for me, alright? If I go too far, you stop me. If things get to be too much, you tell me."

Yuli tensed for a second, before slowly beginning to relax into Shepard's hand. "You really aren't just doing this to humor me, are you?"

"Never." Once, maybe, but not anymore. Shepard hadn't been nearly as hesitant to indulge in his shallower notions when he was younger, and it'd gotten people hurt before. He'd been at his worst right after Elysium, the spacer war hero who could do no wrong. These days he didn't have it in him. "May I kiss you?"

A soft, disbelieving smile was Yuli's reply, full of wonder and affection. "I won't stop you."

That was all the permission Shepard needed.

\---

Not long after that, they went to bed. Yuli asked if Shepard was sure, noted that everyone would know he hadn't come back to the crew quarters, but then Shepard admitted didn't want to be alone and that was honestly all Yuli needed to hear. Besides, the bed was nice and big, they were both exhausted, and Shepard didn't think Yuli actually wanted to head back down to the crew deck just yet.

Thus, for the first time in months (years?), Shepard slept soundly. His dreams were formless, easily forgotten mush, and when he woke, it wasn't in a cold sweat; it was to the stars overhead, an arm draped over him, a hand wound through his chest hair. Soft breath, warm breath against his forehead.

He felt good. Better than he had in a long time. A glance told him that Yuli was still fast asleep beside him, grains of sand clinging to long eyelashes with lips slightly parted. There was a faint layer of dark stubble lining Yuli's jaw, too, a thing he didn't usually allow in his waking hours. Normally he was just so clean and put-together; seeing him like this felt like a privilege, maybe even a gift. Shepard didn't tend to get many of those these days.

What time was it? "EDI?" he asked of the room at large, keeping his voice low. "EDI, status?"

The body draped over his own stirred, murmuring. "Y'turned her off, 'member."

"Ah, shit." No bugs meant EDI could only respond if he contacted her directly through his terminal. Sighing, he shifted to glance at Yuli, who was already frowning slightly. "Sorry I woke you."

"Mmh," Yuli replied eloquently, burrowing into him. "'f I say 'five more minutes' izzat gonna make you less perky."

Shepard grinned. "Me? Perky? Never." He kissed Yuli's forehead and earned a tiny smile. "But I am gonna shower and order us something to eat, if that's alright."

Yawning, Yuli reluctantly peeled himself away. "Mmyeah. Sure, whatever." He stretched like a lazy cat before tunneling right back under the covers, smushing a pillow over his head. "Fuckin' morning person, swear t'god."

Alright then. As much as Shepard would love to stay in bed with his adorable second-in-command, there were things to do. A look at the clock informed him that it was past seven in the morning as he heaved himself out of bed, which was far later than his usual weird-ass hours. He was lucky Miranda wasn't beating down his door; he probably had a thousand messages waiting for him, a hundred more calls put endlessly on hold. The galaxy didn't tend to like it when he slept in.

His chair creaked under his weight as he sat down at his desk, shifting the terminal just a hair to get a better angle for looking at it while leaned back. The first message he sent: a note to Kelly to get her to bring up a double helping of coffee, along with some of whatever Rupert had put out down in the mess that resembled breakfast. The second: a ping directed at Kasumi, consisting of nothing but excited emojis.

The third? A reply to the Illusive Man, who had apparently sent him numerous messages the night before. They'd gotten steadily angrier in their tone until he'd given up around 2200.

Almost immediately, he got a response in the form of a vid call.

[Shepard,] the Illusive Man greeted tersely. [Good to see you haven't gone totally rogue.]

"I was tempted," Shepard replied. Seeing as how he wasn't wearing anything above the waist except the wrapping keeping his shoulder held together, it could be said he was still feeling mildly rebellious about it.

Not that the Illusive Man was unprofessional enough to make note of Shepard's lack of professionalism. [We needed that data,] he said.

Of course they did. Shepard wasn't disputing that. "You're playing fast and loose with the lives of my people, Timmy. I don't appreciate it."

[You may not like my methods, Shepard, but I wouldn't put your team through anything I didn't think they were capable of.]

"Oh, please. You're desperate."

[We live in desperate times.] The Illusive Man took a long drag from his cigar. [Regardless, the data you retrieved yielded some fascinating results. We now know that the Omega relay uses an advanced identify friend-or-foe protocol to calibrate itself, based on Reaper technology.]

"And?"

[And any ship that doesn't have it likely won't make it to the other side in one piece,] he continued grimly. [You're going to need that IFF, Shepard. Fortunately, I may know of somewhere that you can get one. A derelict Reaper-]

"You want me to go poke a dead Reaper," Shepard said flatly. In the other room, he saw Yuli stir and shift, sleepily moving in the direction of getting out of bed. "Not happening."

[Without that IFF, you won't even make it to the Collector base.]

"My people aren't ready for a mission like that." He watched Yuli slowly shuffle over, yawning and rubbing at his eyes as he made his way towards the office. "And I don't like the idea of sticking a piece of Reaper tech to my ship. If and when I go to get that IFF, it'll be when I'm prepared for the consequences of it going wrong."

Eventually, Yuli came to stand in the doorway and leaned against it, a frown etched onto his sharp features. He gestured silently with a hand cutting across his throat. [Then what would you suggest?] the Illusive Man asked calmly.

"I want the locations of my former crew. Wrex, Liara, Tali. People who fought Sovereign with me." Shepard shot Yuli a very brief smile and a tiny nod before continuing. "I want time for everyone to recover and get their shit together. And I want the resources to be able to finish upgrading the ship's systems."

[And you really think all this is necessary?]

"Absolutely. If that fucker wakes up while we're poking it, we're dead. Plain and simple."

The Illusive Man considered this for a moment, letting out a puff of smoke. [Very well,] he said. [Urdnot Wrex is located on Tuchanka. He's been trying to unite the Krogan clans under one banner. Doctor T'soni has an office on Illium, in the port city of Nos Astra; rumor has it she's working for the Shadow Broker.]

"Not the worst person she could be working for." At that, Yuli snorted. "And Tali'zorah vas Neema?"

[That I don't know off the top of my head, but intercepted Quarian communications put her in the vicinity of the Dholen system in Geth space. If I were you, I'd start looking there.] The Illusive Man tapped his cigar on an out-of-sight ashtray before bringing it back to his lips. [I'm forwarding you two more dossiers to look into while you're on Illium, if you do end up going. If you really are looking to get your crew as ready as possible, then it probably can't hurt to have a few more recruits to fill in whatever gaps you may still have.]

Shepard nodded. "Thank you."

[This is the most advance warning you'll ever have on a mission, Shepard,] the Illusive Man noted. [Make good use of it while you can.]

"I will."

After that, the call ended and Shepard let out a long, tired sigh. A Reaper, huh? Well, fuck.

"This is gonna be rough," he said.

Yuli smirked. "At least this time you told him no."

"Yeah. I did, didn't I?" Shepard allowed himself a bit of pride. "We'll get Tali first. She's the one we met back on Freedom's Progress-"

"I remember."

"Right, well..." He leaned back even further in his chair and looked up at Yuli with a helpless smile. "I'm gonna need you to handle it, if that's okay."

Yuli frowned. "Why wouldn't it be? You're out of commission."

"I know, just... Making sure, I guess." It still felt weird to delegate the entirety of a mission like that. "Bring Ash and Garrus so she doesn't freak out on you. After we've picked her up, we'll head to Illium and see what Liara's up to."

"Then Tuchanka?"

"Yeah, but that's just major stops. If any other mission or distress call comes up in the meantime, we're handling those too." Shepard pushed himself up from his chair; Yuli moved away from the wall to close the gap between them. "I'm gonna make the Illusive Man wait for whatever the hell it is he wants on the other side of that relay."

Yuli pursed his lips in a smile and draped his arms over Shepard's broad shoulders. "And then?"

"And then... I dunno. We dick around for as long as I can make excuses to the Alliance for, I guess." Shepard had to grin; their noses were nearly touching. "Then you and Kasumi break me out and we go on wild space adventures for as long as the Reapers will let us."

"What a renegade," Yuli murmured.

Shepard chuckled fondly. "Only for you."

Then they kissed, and they didn't end up breaking apart until the door beeped with breakfast.


	24. many have died and we cannot survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miranda might not like how this is going, but she can still make use of it if she's clever about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA okay fine it's done it's d o n e
> 
> this is my sequel hook and my epilogue, i was gonna write him picking up Tali from Tali's PoV but then this idea hit me and went SO much smoother than attempting to write that did. by the way i didn't intend to write Miranda as such a frigid person but like? idk. either redeeming her is gonna be really hard or i might not end up bothering. i don't think Yuli will ever like her though. 
> 
> MY CO-AUTHOR FINALLY CREATED AN ACCOUNT, they have dibs on writing Yuli's backstory stuff, they can also see comments now so you can say stuff and they'll be able to read it. lately they've been under a lot of stress though, so i want all of you to be extra nice and tell them what you think of Yuli as a character.

Miranda was not pleased.

She had thought that she'd prepared for every outcome. Every eventuality. Everyone on the  _Normandy_ had been hand-picked to work with Shepard on some level. There were people he could see as antagonists, people he'd know as friends and confidants. They'd even brought in Moreau knowing that Shepard historically didn't do well alone, with Chambers and a few others to act as potential back-ups if none of the planned squadmates panned out either. 

Even everyone on the first station had been screened. But then Wilson had to go and change his tune, and the Lazarus Project timeline ended up getting accellerated. She hadn't had time to go through the psychological profiles of the people on the second station. If she had, Markov would've never been allowed anywhere near Shepard.

She still wasn't sure how she was going to swing this. There were options, sure, but she had to be careful. One wrong move and Shepard would abandon Cerberus entirely; she didn't want to have to take drastic measures to keep him.

The door chimed, and she looked up from her terminal with her jaw set in a firm line. "Come in," she said.

It opened. There stood Markov, dressed smartly in a modern style for a trip into the city; the long vertical lines of his coat only served to emphasize how tall he was, even beyond the Asari average where they were headed. He'd be a hit on Illium. "You wanted to see me?"

Miranda eyed him coldly. He seemed cowed enough, but that could easily change. "Take a seat, agent," she told him. "Make yourself comfortable."

A furrow appeared in his brow as he did as he was told, the door sliding shut behind him. "Is something wrong?"

She leaned forward, elbows coming to rest on her desk. "What do you know about Shepard, agent? As a person."

"Uh..." The furrowing deepened; he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, frowning at her. "I don't see how that's relevant, but if you want my honest opinion? He's a reckless, self-sacrificing dumbass. But he's also a good man who leads from the front and generally knows what he's doing."

"That's not who he is as a person, Markov, that's who he is as a leader," she pointed out. "Anyone on this ship could tell me that. But they're not the ones who sneak off to join him in bed every night."

The blood drained from his face. "Owen said-"

"I believe he also mentioned the internal sensors." She allowed herself some satisfaction at how mortified the he looked by that. "It's not quite as reliable as a direct feed, but we could still put together a coherent enough picture even if the sound was muffled."

He swallowed thickly, taking a moment to steel himself before speaking again. "So what are you gonna do about it?"

Ah, there it was. That bristling, that defiance. A little of it was all well and good, but the extent to which Markov would display it was troubling. Especially when put in proximity of someone like Shepard. "Nothing, at present."

"Nothing," he repeated. "Right, okay. I'll believe that when I see it, ma'am."

"Frankly, there would be no point. It would compromise the mission if we did anything about it now."

"Hah! Like he'd let it." Markov smirked. "Owen would just go off on his own and get it done without-"

He cut himself off, looking sharply at Miranda. From defiant to horrified in an instant.

"That's what you want, isn't it?" He stared hard at her. "You don't care about the colonies at all. You're doing this to get to  _him_ ."

"We do care about the colonies, agent," she said. "It's still a pointless loss of life on an incomprehensible scale. We're also against the Reapers and whatever it is they're planning."

"But you don't actually care how many people end up dead." He narrowed his eyes. "Even the Collector base. You're not just desperate to get there because you want whatever's in it, you saw him scared. You  _want_ him scared. Because if he's not scared, he's able to find reasons to fight you."

Miranda sighed. "Engage in conspiracy theories all you like, but the mission still comes first. We can talk about politics after it's finished."

"This isn't politics!" he snapped. "This is you people being fucking abhorrent!"

"In case you've forgotten, 'you people' does also include you."

Markov's reaction was like a bucket of water on a campfire. Sudden realization followed by quiet, inwardly-directed loathing. She smiled, utterly cold and lacking in reassurance. Finally, something she could use.

"We need to be logical about this, agent," she said. "Shepard is humanity's best chance at fighting the Collectors, but he's our best chance against the Reapers as well. He's also humanity's greatest advocate, whether it's intentional or not. He may not like it, but in the end Cerberus is still the best bet for putting his diplomatic skills to use for the good of everyone. If he can convince the galaxy that even the ones who are supposedly the worst humanity has to offer have some merit-"

"Then you can exploit the whole galaxy instead of just humans," he concluded flatly.

Another tired sigh. "You're really not willing to see reason, are you?"

"Owen's the one who sees the best in people. I'm the one who sees the worst." He pushed himself up from his chair, straightening out his coat. "It keeps him safe from people like you."

"Very well then." She returned to her terminal, tapping out a few commands. "As of this moment, consider yourself no longer on Cerberus payroll. I can't kick you off the ship, but from now on you're Shepard's responsibility. If you're serious about protecting him, I suggest you figure out a way to arrange for it to happen when you're no longer here."

His jaw tightened. "Fine."

"It's a noble goal, Markov. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm heartless." She stood from her seat herself, looking him in the eye. "Besides, it would jeopardize everything to forcibly tear you two apart now. Shepard would destroy everything Cerberus has worked for over the years in a matter of days if it was for your sake."

"Oh, and I guess I'm supposed to feel bad."

"I'm saying I hope you're worth it." He deflated a bit at that. "Because if you're not, the person the galaxy's best hope is currently leaning on might be the thing that sends it all crashing down. Either you can do this and you keep him going through all of it, or you're the reason everything ends."

She'd been working up to this. Carefully putting all the pieces in place for him to react in just the right way. From the terrible, stricken look he gave her, she'd been correct in her assessment.

"It's your choice," she said gently. "You can go now."

He nodded, only half-listening as he turned towards the door. No longer angry or defiant, having redirected his thoughts inward in dark, quiet spirals. With luck, he'd leave of his own accord and she wouldn't have to do anything.

But there was still one more card she could play. "Oh, and Markov?"

He glanced back, and she smiled.

"I don't suppose you've ever heard of something called Marfan syndrome?"

A look of confusion crossed his features. "Is that what Joker has or something?"

"Mm, no. I was just curious." She took her place once more in her chair, prim and proper as ever. "Carry on."

Knowing she still had an ace up her sleeve, she let him leave without another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS FOR READING omg
> 
> https://logicalfangirl.tumblr.com is my main blog, you can find art (usually tagged "fluffadin" for Owen specifically going all the way back to his WoW days, or any of the "commander shepard", "mshep", or "male shepard" tags for my various dudesheps including him along with "mass effect" as a general tag that includes meta posts and other characters). i take questions, comments, and even anon messages. also i love every single one of you.


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